★★★★★ 0/5

Bumped: Parade’s End

After just one week Nine has moved Parade's End to GEM.

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2013-03-09_0049That didn’t take long.

After just one week Nine has pulled Parade’s End from its Wednesday schedule and moved it to GEM at 9:30pm as a double episode.

It will be replaced with the Movie: Sherlock Holmes (2009).

This week the show rated just 453,000 / 322,000 for its two episodes.

While the drama was slow even before the commercial interruptions, the problem here is a bit of a dog chasing its tail.

Audiences are reluctant to commit to shows if they do not trust the network will keep it on air, and networks cannot keep a show on air when not enough viewers are watching.

Updated.

48 Responses

  1. Quality of the programme, commercial interruptions and a late finish aside … one thing Nine can’t deny is that the promos were so bad the viewer had no reason to even start watching Parade’s End. As with the Sherlock series last year, and a majority of promos for Person of Interest, The Mentalist, CSI etc, the promos are so poor, Nine is just pissing ratings into the wind. A real shame. (TV Tonight readers. If you’re not watching Person of Interest, you’re denying yourself a great piece of TV)

  2. who wants to bet they will stuff up Arrow and Following?

    seriously Nine is getting worse every year, where is the final season of Weeds or even Dallas. they promise so much and don’t deliver, and when they do they move them around and take them off.

    and why wait till Easter to air new shows?! what’s wrong with airing a new show in Feb and having a week off at Easter? 9 should take lessons from 7!

  3. I usually love period dramas and watched about 45 minutes before flicking over the channel. I just didn’t warm to the characters at all especially the 2 leads. Shame really because some of the scenery looked spectacular. To me it doesn’t matter what channel it was on. Watched and enjoyed The Good Wife instead.

  4. It is up to ch9 to assess how good a product is before they schedule it as they will have very little input to the production side of this purchase. Now if it does come over as a little slow and not exactly dynamic, they need to be realistic. Bear in mind each of these eps is 60 mins, so we all know they are going to cram in 25-30mins of ads etc and that a double ep will be a 3 hour marathon.
    So if I was an experienced programmer, would I really put this up on a Wed night, starting at around 8.40pm ish, when many folk have work the next day?

    No I would have to be really dumb to do that. To get the best value out of this, it would have been better to slate it on either a saturday night to pull in and attract a different demo, or like others have suggested, put it on during non ratings.

    FTA has a great track record of these scheduling stuff ups and ch9 are world class at wrecking any show they buy. So all the criticism is justified. Will they learn? Of course not, they never do

  5. ‘Nine purchased the program rights before the project had even been made, so therefore it isn’t their fault the show was not up to scratch’.
    Being a semi refined person I shall refrain from publishing an eight letter word that sums that statement up, other than to say it starts with bull….!

    Sorry David, I can’t agree, it serves them right.

  6. I remember they tried to on sell this to the ABC and ABC rejected Nine. If they played it over non ratings period it could of fitted on a Tuesday when there was no cricket or tennis

  7. The double-ep and late finish was what did it for me. Way too much commitment for something that I, along with many others, was pretty sure would tank and be pulled. I didn’t even bother recording it.

    I f’king hate double-eps. I may have mentioned that before.

  9. I agree with Nine’s decision to move it to Gem. Why show it on the main channel if it’s not rating at least they are going to show it on Gem.

  11. Everybody knew Parade’s End would be dumped after ratings came out Thursday Morning, Nine were just waiting until Friday evening to do it.

    The BBC had a track of excellent and popular period dramas. Lately it has had a very poor record.

    Channel 9 knew it was a 5 hour mini-series made without ads for BBC2 so it was unlikely to be another DA. They took a gamble and lost.

    They also knew all about it before they choose to air it this week. There was no hindsight in the programming.

    Nine should have just taken their lumpy bits, not promoted it much, and shown it over Easter. That way the media would be writing about yay – something good on in non-ratings instead of what idiots Channel 9 programmers are and who pissed of fans who can’t watch the rest of it are.

    Channel 9 could now quite likely just screen Parade’s End on Gem just before the non-exclusive rights become available for UK TV.

  13. I reckon Sunday nights over easter non-ratings if 7 pull Downton, which no doubt they will. They may even get away with double eps then.

    Maybe just give it (sell it cheap) to the ABC where they’ll get 700k.

  15. When will they ever learn, I suppose they were trying for another “Downton abbey” but thse shows come along once in a while and then everyone tries to copy them…..it doesn’t work.

    And two episodes during the week….get real some people do actually work. I have enough on the PVR of a wednesday night with “White Collar and Last resort” to catch up with let alone another two hour waste of time.

  17. The Following is getting good audiences 18-49 and Nine need it to succeed.

    Launching it now while Seven are dominating that demographic with MKR and following dramas would be risky. Trying it a couple of weeks before the Easter and the School Holidays cause disruptions for a month would even sillier.

    What’s more The Following may get an MA rating in which case it can’t be shown before 9:30pm and it would need a good lead-in. Which Nine don’t have at the moment except on Monday with the TBBT when POI is doing quite well.

    Channel 9 are going to wait till after Easter when they can put in place a new lineup before trying to launch shows.

  18. I guess it easy to criticise ch9 with the benefit of hindsight….. However, why the hell did some one not have the foresight to realise, wrong time, wrong night and too bloody long.

    Seriously who stuffed this up? and how much did it cost them to buy it?

    One dumb decision cost $100,000s

    As this was a BBC co-production, each episode runs for a full 60 minutes, pump in loads of ads, multiply by 2 and start it latish on a Wednesday…..great move…..not

    1. Television is always part-gamble. Sometimes they pay off and sometimes they don’t. Nine purchased the rights before the project had even been made, so it isn’t their fault the production did not meet expectations. BBC has a great track record in period dramas, and with a name like Tom Stoppard we all saw its potential to be another Downton. You also gamble when you Programme a show. Will it work? What’s the competition got? Have the promos succeeded? Do you play 2 episodes to hook people in, or does that overcook it? I agree we are all smarter programmers in hindsight, and not just on this occasion.

  20. Why why why do they keep doing this? Really pisses me off. Don’t know why they think a repeat of a show will rate better, why not start showing The Following, which they have been advertising as ‘coming soon’ since before Christmas, instead of waiting till after Easter.

  21. What a surprise! This never had a chance considering it was aired for the knuckle-dragging audience of 9. They must have used up their allotment of “encore presentation”s of ‘2.5 Men’.

  22. It was always a strange purchase for Ch. 9 or perhaps they thought they might have another Downton Abbey.
    Those programs only work on commercial free ABC. It is impossible to enjoy a lavishly produced English period costume drama adapted by Tom Stoppard no less, only to be rudely interrupted by plugs for out of control drug addicts on a Current Affair!

  23. So who called it?

    Seriously Nine after one week, maybe you should have played this over the summer non ratings period… will they every learn?

    I think the biggest problem was showing a double ep and ending so late, of course the ratings are going to suffer, people are either not going to bother or record to watch later. I can see many now just deleting this from their PVR and not bothering to watch it now.

  25. Was late Wed night the best slot for a movie-length double episode of a slow period drama requiring concentration and commitment from the audience?

    Seemed more like an early Sunday evening show.

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