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TEN changes Fridays again

TEN's Fridays are (seriously) like a night of dining with a Lazy Susan.

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TEN’s Fridays are (seriously) like a night of dining with a Lazy Susan. Flipping between series television (Law and Order, Hawaii Five-0) and movies is just confusing everybody. As a result nothing gets any traction and gets dumped once again. It just becomes a dog chasing its tail…

This Friday Hawaii Five-0 repeats are out and a movie Shallow Hal is in. As a result Go Girls will not resume its series at 10:30pm.

Everybody, including TEN, knows their audience is out on a Friday night. This is not a new dilemma. Here’s a story I wrote commenting that it was a problem way back in 2007. Why are we still dealing with this 4 years later?

So please live with the reality of low numbers, or programme with something aimed at the audience that is actually home and quit all these changes?

Friday Sept 16
8:30 pm Shallow Hal
10:55 pm TEN Late News
11:25 pm Sports Tonight
11:55 pm The Late Show With David Letterman
12:55 am Burn Notice
2:00 am Eureka

Pass me the Dim Sims please.

31 Responses

  1. The audience on a Friday night is not only over 40’s, young families don’t tend to head out every Friday night and with a huge amount of people relying mostly on some sort of recording device to try and catch there shows as it is, what is the harm in playing something like Blue Bloods. It gets cancelled due to ratings, but nothing gets ratings anyway, so just stick to a line up already!

  2. Its getting beyond a joke. First they moved Blue Bloods to that timeslot and were shocked to see it die (they were the only ones wondering why with such a stupid decision for such a terrific show – one of few 2011 series to be renewed for a second season), then it was White Collar (which then moved to Saturday 9:30pm – even worse timeslot), then Burn Notice. TEN need to realise the only thing good for that timeslot with their target audience is movies and sport – simple as that.

  3. I read a very good comment left earlier as to why they dont ask the viewers. That would make too much sense and logic and commonsense do not appear to be the domain of programming chiefs, I could be wrong.
    Take a look at ‘The Bill’ on 7TWO advertised widely as being the home of “The Bill” but after a few weeks bumped back to 9.30 and then bumped completely it seems. I would have thought Saturday night after Heartbeat would have been a perfect fit for it , after all it worked for ABC for many many years. I remember when I was working in TV there used to be notices on the notice board saying when things were being changed, and was always for a good reason we had a big special on or something like that. Now days it just seems programmes are moved at will, for no apparent reason.

  4. The problem is that most of your early evening audience on a Friday Night is out with family and friends or in some cases working.Ten obviously doesn’t take that into account with the timings of the shows and what they use

  6. Well as david said,Ten’s viewers are out on a friday and the only ones who are left are the 40+ oldies. Ten need to focus on this demo! whether it’s an brand new show just for fridays 7.30 or 8.30, It could be a show similar to better homes and gardens, but ditch the craft and pet segments. If Ten Got the perfect hosts for the segments then it could be a success as long as they dont go cheap on production. They have alot of people to choose from.
    But then there is sundays they need to fix and i have said it all they need a rove style talk show maybe with shaun micallef

  8. Obviously sci-fis are not a realistic suggestion, and procedurals are not working, i dont think movies would do much better, especially the ones ten has in its closet. Why not try some imported lifestyle or factuals? They do great on foxtel and 7two and with the bar set that low I doubt they could disappoint. There are plenty out there I bet they are cheap.

  10. On Friday nights this year we’ve had…Undercover Boss US, Blue Bloods, Burn Notice, Law and Order, Law and Order UK, Hawaii Five-O, to name but a few. I’m also positive they aired Twilight there a few months ago which is ridiculous as they just aired it last Sunday as well.

    Surely there’s something better they can air than Shallow Hal, again? It was only on around 3-4 months ago. Then again, it could be worse. A few years ago they were obsessed with Mean Girls and About a Boy, thankfully we haven’t seen either of those for a while

  12. Lately Ten have been worse than Nine with all the chopping and changing – and that’s not an easy thing to do.

    David, you make a good point about programming for the people who are usually home on a Friday evening. ABC1 has apparently been doing it successfully for years.

  13. @ Cathy/Kiwi/Nathan – new episodes of Burn Notice are on One at 8.30 on Mondays, aren’t they? Just saw a promo during ‘Psych’ (nice to have it back!) but didn’t catch if it was new or not.

  14. friday nights should always be movies anyway, it’ll always be a different one every week so there would be no confusion. not everyone wants to watch a crime show on a friday night, its the end of a work week. people just want to relax in front of the tv and watch something thats not dark like crime, so playing a comedy is a safe move. Seven and Nine play movies on Friday nights as well as GO and 7mate so why does Ten feel the need to be different?

    another thing, every other channel But ten uses their 10:30 slot to play lower rated shows or bump shows up that were on earlier. Ten plays news and sports tonight at that time, why do they even bother anymore. someone on another site brought this up but why don’t they just use the 10:30 slot monday to thursday and have just a 30 minute news show at 11:30 followed by Letterman? that way shows can get played out that don’t rate. ps, shouldn’t Go Girls be on Go? 😉

  15. @Belinda – Yep, didn’t think I’d ever say it, but. “Thank God for GEM”. Prime Suspect and a few decent movies now and then, with Underbelly Razor reruns so I can watch something else on Sunday nights and catch the rerun on GEM later.
    For the non-AFL/NRL viewer TEN’s offering of H50 reruns, which didn’t rate first time ’round, aren’t good enough. Find some less-than-sixth-run movies or something different.

  16. I watch ELEVEN and 7two on a Friday night.

    Maybe TEN should put it out to the viewers and have an online poll asking what their viewers want. Cheap and may solve some of their problems.

  21. I was enjoying watching the Hawaii Five-0. Didn’t catch on to it until towards the end of the season. I thought the repeats were a great way to catch up. Maybe in summer… If it’s not moved again.

  22. This is exactly the sort of thing that is causing viewers to switch off Commercial TV. They leave you dizzy with their hide & seek scheduling games.

    The networks need to take a long, hard look at your survey results/comments. I bet I’m in ever-increasing company as I switch to ABC and SBS, and away from the Commercial stations.

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