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TEN still trails ABC

Ratings: It really should have been the week that TEN turned around its fortunes, yet the ABC kept in front. But Seven again won Total People.

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It really should have been the week that TEN turned around its fortunes, but it again trailed the ABC in weekly ratings.

The ABC bettered TEN on Sunday, Monday (its best result all year), Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

TEN’s schedule premiered 5 new shows last week, as part of a wider fast-tracking strategy to lift its figures. On preliminary figures they all disappointed, but tomorrow we will see how they improved in Timeshifted data and on Tuesday the network presents its 2013 Upfronts to media agencies.

The week was another win for Seven with Nine still strong in the Demos. Seven won every night except Thursday which was won by Nine. Nine won 16-39, Seven won 18-49 and 25-54.

Seven won every city in Total People except in Melbourne where its early evening schedule is losing badly to Nine. It’s now a network anomaly, with some numbers the worst in over five years.

And get ready to re-think the ratings landscape one again. Both Friday and Saturday nights, audience numbers could not pass the magic million.

Network:
Seven: 30.6
Nine: 26.7
ABC: 19.8
TEN: 17.3
SBS: 5.6

Primary Channel:
Seven: 22.4
Nine: 19.2
ABC1: 15.1
TEN: 11.2
SBS ONE: 4.6

Multichannels:
7TWO: 4.5
GO!: 4.4
7mate: 3.7
ELEVEN: 3.3
Gem: 3.2
ONE: 2.9
ABC2: 2.7
ABC3: 1.1
SBS TWO: 1.0
ABC News 24: 0.9

The X Factor Results show topped the week with 1.67m, higher than the Performance show with 1.49m. Next for Seven were Sunday Night (1.36m), Anh Does Vietnam (1.32m), Seven News (Sun: 1.2m, weeknights: 1.04m), Surveillance Oz (1.12m), Winners and Losers (1.1m) and Highway Patrol (1.05m).

Only three shows topped the one million for Nine: 60 Minutes (1.37m), The Big Bang Theory (1.01m) and House Husbands (1.01m), next were Nine News (weeknights: 995,000, Sun: 937,000), Big Brother (Live noms: 987), ACA (934,000) and The Mentalist (800,000).

Four Corners (1.03m) was ABC’s top show for the week, followed by Gruen Planet (1.02m), ABC News (weeknights: 1.02m, Sat: 876,000), New Tricks (990,000), Australian Story (984,000), Jack Irish (953,000), Media Watch (940,000) and The Hamster Wheel (855,000).

A new Modern Family episode (850,000) was TEN’s strongest performer then NCIS (789,000), Homeland (634,000), TEN News (619,000), Law and Order: SVU (576,000), NCIS: LA (574,000), Jamie’s Thirty Minute Meals (564,000 / 480,000) and Merlin (558,000).

On SBS ONE it was Coast (307,000), Battle Castle (297,000), Who Do You Think You Are? (293,000), She Wolves: England’s Early Queens (278,000) and Destination Flavour (256,000).

There are 6 more ratings weeks remaining in the 2012 survey year.

28 Responses

  2. Does channel 10 have a branding problem now? with all these shows recently that have flopped do people subconsciously think channel 10 is just not worth it anymore?

  3. There is an old line in business – It’s easier to keep customers than to find new ones. Maybe this apply’s to viewers as well. TEN thank’s to Murdoch’s changes, have lost it’s viewers and now has to find new ones.
    I have noticed TEN advertising more on radio in the last fortnight. The Project and Super Sunday. But going by these figures, so far has not worked.

  4. There are a number of big picture trends emerging here – like the appeal of the credibility of the ABC’s news and current affairs. It wont be long before the ABCs main bulletin has more people watching it at 7PM than the the FTAs main news bulletins. Premium, first run local content is the big drawcard – reality/entertainment because it is live “event” or “almost live” and drama and comedy that has not been seen anywhere before. The ratings for foreign imports held over (3rd series of Downton Abbey screening in the UK now held over until next year!) will continue to fall off a cliff. Cannot believe the “jumping at shadows” comment from Tim Worner when FTA revenue is being excoriated. Lucky for Seven, 10 has imploded (no way back without a new board and management) and Nine will remain on a tight reign.

  5. Armchair- I totally agree with you. It’s not like CH10 would be sacrificing massive ratings by showing more live NBL. If they can show Devil Wears Prada about 5 times in 12 months then surely they can show some live sport in prime time.
    David can verify this but if I recall correctly back in Ch10’s glory days they televised live of near live basketball fri/sat night.
    Every network needs some solid sport coverage in their schedule. CH7- afl, tennis, V8s. Ch9- NRL, cricket. Ch10- F1 and MotoGP,??? Nothing much on their own I’m afraid. Why not get some a league coverage even ?

  6. It says a lot about a network’s prime time news bulletin when they are promoting its content the day or two days before. If this is genuine news then perhaps psychics are credible after all. As the quality of commercial network news services continue to head down the path of sensationalism then you will see ABC 7pm news become the most watched of news offerings.

  8. @tomothyd
    All Ten’s content is more suited to Eleven. Eleven is making money and Ten is not though (though a lot of its losses are associated with costs in scrapping the failed News and Current Affairs and One sports channel).

    The US has a market of 314m people and large overseas sales. That can support niche markets, Australia can’t. Most of the programmes you mention are obtained by Channel 7 in bundled content deals and then screened at around Midnight to 100k people. There is no profit in that.

  9. And there is another break for the US election coming for NCIS and NCIS LA.

    Ten did intend to do something about it. They held back the episodes from the end of the last season so could they screen the Deering arc in one continuous block at the end of the year. But they ended up in such hole on Sunday nights that they had to show the episodes then.

  10. Why would it be a good week for Channel 10?

    They are desperate. They are having to launch a lot of poor quality new US shows, into a small TV audience when Nine, The ABC and especially Seven have established lineups that are doing well in their demographic.

    It’s not like new US shows have done well in the last couple of years. And those launched in October have an especially bad record.

  11. If Ten were covering the NBL Live on ONE or Ten on Friday Nights and Saturday Nights as well as Sunday Arvos Live (only into vic and nsw) then i would bet it would lift its ratings. The fact that they have no Sport on the main channel is a problem. The issue with Ten is that they stuffed things up but dont know how to fix them. Very easy to stuff up but very hard to fix.

  12. @Josh777 Yeah something like that from TEN and Co would be great, even at the start of that weeks episode say that is a repeat; like in the old days when they used to say: “David Letterman is on a break this week, we hope you enjoy this repeat episode.”

    Give the viewer some confidence that there is a reason a new episode is not on and they can only show what they have.

  13. Weeknight News Ratings:

    Seven News – 1.04 Million
    ABC News – 1.02 Million
    Nine News – 0.995 Million

    Woah! ABC News is way too close to Seven’s!

  15. this is an even worse situation than a few weeks ago, all this fasttracking is coming at a great cost to their 2013 lineup. atleast a few weeks ago they were doing badly with a cheap schedule. seems like short term gain for long term pain, only they aren’t getting the short term gain.

  16. @GG

    Seven News Melbourne still think that the problem with its bulletin is its lead-in. If only they actually saw that the problem was the awful content. HSV7 have overtaken QTQ9 for tmorgan96’s “Biggest Sensationalist Turd of a Bulletin” award. Congratulations and get off the air.

    The Seven News Dept. have lost the plot.

  17. @ Cam Reed – on FOX8 adverts after an episode of a fast tracker series (say Revolution) will say “we’ve caught up to the U.S. so Revolution will return in 2 weeks”. However, then during the Olympics they were saying shows were on “Winter break” even though shows were continuing overseas. I think it will be a matter of time before all networks start advertising that a break is occuring because there is no episode to show rather than a lie or no advert at all.

  18. Perfect photo!
    Ten need a fresh on air look next year. Whether they retain the logo or not, they need a standard set of graphics, idents, fonts and voice overs, much like they have on ONE. Consistent programming (US hiatus’s excluded) and correct start times will help regain trust from the viewers.
    They also really have to assess whether their programming is suited to the main channel or one of the digital counterparts. Many of the ‘no audience or laugh track’ comedies tend to not work in prime time Australia and get shafted to late night as we see on Seven with Parks & Rec, Arrested Dev, Always Sunny, 30 Rock. They still have a good following, and should be a prime time offering on the digital channels. Ben and Kate is a prime example of a limited appeal show which would be better suited to ELEVEN following Raising Hope.

  21. @blindowl- How I notice my teens watching much more ABC than TEN these days, maybe reflected as much in the above figs. When that’s happening something is really wrong (with TEN) and really right (with ABC).

  22. Don’t worry, all of Seven’s news problems in Melbourne will be resolved tomorrow – when they move The Price Is Right from its 5.00pm slot!

    I don’t think so.

  24. Be interesting to see how people react to NCIS being a repeat this week (seeing it was 2nd top rated for 10), not much TEN can do about it of course as it has been on a break in the US since Oct 09. It restarts Oct 23 in the US, but that is or Weds and NCIS airs on Tuesdays here, so not like they can shuffle the schedule to suit it.

    Be a test of the on again off again nature of how the US air TV Shows vs us getting it fast-tracked and following there schedule, though I think they should tell us (ie: “NCIS is having a break in the US, so next weeks episode will be a repeat and new episodes will resume on —–” while advertising it).

    So will wait and see how the ratings go in 2 weeks time, when the new ep has aired.

  25. What must be really worrying for TEN is that only one programme topped 800,000, compared to the others this is a disaster as they have nothing at the moment to draw viewers in. It’s also interesting, although I’m still trying to think about the implications, that Nine and the ABC both had 3 programmes over 1million, but the ABC had a further four over 900,000 to Nine’s three, which seems to indicate that the ABC schedule has broader appeal….doesn’t it?

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