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Puberty Blues hits sweet spot for TEN

Ratings: Finally some good news for TEN as Puberty Blues begins well. But the night belongs to Seven.

After days of terrible headlines, finally some good news for TEN: Puberty Blues begins well, pulling in 925,000 viewers.

The new drama was only just pipped in its timeslot by an extended episode of The Amazing Race Australia on 976,000.

Seven won the night with 30.4% to Nine 27.5%, TEN 20.1%, ABC 17.6% and SBS 4.4%.

Seven News topped the night with 1.28m viewers for Seven then Today Tonight (1.09m), Home and Away (996,000), Amazing Race (976,000), Criminal Minds (741,000 / 486,000) and Deal or No Deal (586,000).

Nine News (1.14m) led for Nine followed by Big Brother (1.13m), ACA (1.00m), The Farmer Wants a Wife (909,000) and Hot Seat (554,000).

Puberty Blues (925,000) was TEN’s strongest performer. The show also won the demos in its timeslot and attracted universal praise on Twitter last night. It also rose high above its lead in of The Shire (502,000). MasterChef All Stars was 751,000, TEN News was 718,000 and The Project 6pm was 460,000. Class Of debuted to 431,000.

ABC News topped the magic million for ABC1 with 1.01m then Gruen Sweat (918,000), Qi (762,000), 7:30 (667,000), Randling (519,000), Would I Lie to You? (447,000), Australia’s Paralympians (324,000) and At the Movies (283,000).

Wildest Africa (246,000) was best for SBS ONE, followed by The Last Explorers (189,000) and China: Triumph and Turmoil (164,000).

Heartbeat topped multichannels with 329,000.

The Morning Show: 200,000
Mornings: 119,000
The Talk: 29,000

Wednesday 15 August 2012

52 Responses

  1. I mainly agree with unclepete in that I’m glad good quality drama largely worked on Ten. Plus I hope they maintain good scripted programming for Eleven. For at least 8.30pm-10.30pm most – or better still – all days. That way many viewers might stick around rather than leave. It happened with Ten. Plus that’s what happened on Monday for me with Eleven. As well as putting hour dramas at 10pm or the like also drives me away. I just wish TV stations and channels would avoid such nonsense. Sorry didn’t mean to rant but congratulations and I hope there will be other successes.

  2. I guess it’s different strokes for different folks, but I can honestly say that as soon as I hear an upcoming show is a John Edwards production, that show is 100% guaranteed my viewership. I love his work.

  3. I’m just telling it like it is, I really can’t stand John Edwards’ style and he does have a certain style that pretty much all his shows follow and none have been huge ratings successes.

    Beaconsfield was a movie, Love My Way was on Foxtel so never had a big audience, Secret Life had a small niche following at best, don’t remember it ever having huge ratings, has made no impact and has largely been forgotten about, Police Rescue was on the ABC and it would be impossible for it to have had huge ratings as back in those days nothing on the ABC rated highly and Rush has been a laughable low rating flop from day one.

    Really I think it’s time to give someone else a go and stop commissioning this guy when in reality his so called “critically acclaimed” shows have never struck a chord with the masses and have never been ratings successes.

    1. Alex: your mistake is not only overlooking how these shows performed in demos, but also in measuring a show’s performance on one network with one on another. A high rating drama on ABC / Foxtel and even TEN is not going to attract the same numbers as Seven and Nine. That doesn’t make them a failure. All of those shows listed were big successes on their respective platforms.

  4. @Alex and Cynical – Your comment comes from either of two things, naivety Or you’re disgruntled for some deeper reason? Not to give props to an alternate news service (it is officially an advertising news website), but if you read Mumbrella from time to time, you’d soon learn that advertisers nearly only ever want to spend their money on performers in the key demos (nearly never on total people), which Edwards shows continually either win the night or finish in the top 3. Total people numbers are still reported but are definitely not a key indicator of success.

  5. @ Cynical I think you have just said what a lot of people are thinking. John Edwards has actually never, read never ever produced a hit and you’d have to wonder just how much he’s paying these “critics”. All of his shows have had sub par ratings and are not welcomed by the masses but as you say loved by the “critics”. Well critics be damned, ratings speak for themselves, I’ve never liked this guy’s style and never will. 900K for a premiere episode of a new Australian drama is not a good result and no amount of spin will have me believe otherwise.

    1. Not true. Beaconsfield. The Secret Life of Us. Police Rescue. Rush all enjoyed successful ratings. Plus Love my Way a big success on Pay TV. 900k is very good for a TEN drama, especially with a lead-in of 500k. No issue if his work is not your style, but let’s not twist shows that had successful runs.

  6. Puberty Blues was great as was Class Of…
    Two quality shows back to back on Ten. Now there’s something we havent seen for an awfully long time.

  7. It happens with every John Edwards show; it opens near or under a million and critics call it a hit, sweet, monster success – or other words to that effect – while other shows that open with the same or higher figures, and not produced by the God himself, are labelled worrying. I wish critics would cut out their bias towards Edwards and get real. On its opening night, and even after sooo much publicity, Puberty Blues rated less than Home and Away. It is far from “good news”.

  8. @ryan: you have to remember that Monday was Launch and Tuesday was a Live Special always provides a bonus in numbers. I think the daily shows will average around 1 million a night which is achieving expectations. I think it will be much the same tonight. Don’t be surprised though if Friday’s ratings are low considering it is a Friday.

  9. Well said Russell (except for the point about removing those shows from Ten and placing them on Eleven – no thanks! Eleven has some great stuff on it and doesn’t deserve to be removed for that garbage).

    Hopefully all the channels will begin to take of this. Good reality competitions and high quality drama will always trump cheap and nasty. We have outgrown that (mostly) as an audience.

    Loved PB Ten, keep it up and give us more of this and less of the skank.

  10. I liked it and will watch it again. The young girl playing Sue is very likeable. The nostalgia factor will eventually wear off so I hope it will be all about the story and not the hair styles.

  11. Great Show Puberty Blues. Just wanted to say well done to channel Ten for investing in some original programs not just importing OS concepts. EDN has had a bad start but at least it’s an original format. And “Class of” another original show. We should be grateful to have a local network willing to take some risks..Lets not kick Ten while they are down.

  12. PB was even better than I thought it would be. I think it will definitely build on those numbers after all the positive feedback and word of mouth. It was just so nostalgic and reminded me of how Australia and the rest of the World used to be, without all the technology and stress that comes with it. People seemed happier back then, life was so much less complicated and fun.

  13. Loved PB, one hour was nowhere near long enough. We were wetting ourselves over the slang, some of it was still kicking around when I was a kid in the 80’s.

    Re Lara Bingle, didn’t her show end up holding at a fairly steady rate? I don’t think it is the epic flop everyone is making it out to be, it was streets ahead of the Shire anyway.

    @ Lizzie in this new tv landscape, a debut of 925 is perfectly acceptable.

  14. Wow. Nostalgia is a powerful thing.

    Was nobody else bothered that there was almost no story? Or that it was a collection of the most predictable stereotypes – downtrodden housewife, strict father, et al – with no depth or nuance anywhere in sight? Or that there was not even the vaguest suggestion of an underlying concept to answer the question ‘why are we re-visiting the 70s now?’

    Maybe there’ll be some story and character development in future episodes. Nevertheless, an entire episode of scene setting is lazy. I’m reasonably sure that viewers who encountered anything this slow and torpid in an American or UK drama would be unforgiving. But apparently we still “make allowances” for local drama.

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