★★★★★ 0/5

ABC facing local drama ratings battle

Ratings: Sunday's three way local drama battle showed the kind of challenges that lay ahead for The Time of Our Lives.

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6toolSunday night’s three way local drama battle showed the kind of  challenges that lay ahead for the ABC’s new drama The Time of Our Lives.

The show was fourth in its timeslot at 747,000 viewers, won by Seven’s A Place to Call Home (1.28m). The contemporary drama has attracted promising reviews and plenty of positive tweets -but Twitter does not equate to OzTAM people meters. Given the competition the numbers were not alarming, but are down on Paper Giants and Cliffy.

The Block (1.63m) topped the night’s viewing but Seven took the night.

Seven network share was 32.0% then Nine 30.5%, TEN 19.3%, ABC 14.3% and SBS 3.8%.

Seven News (1.48m) was strongest for Seven then Sunday Night (1.33m), A Place to Call Home and The Force (both (1.28m), Border Security (1.12m), and Endeavour (397,000), which dropped nearly 900,000 of its lead-in.

Following The Block, Nine’s other showings were Nine News (1.46m), 60 Minutes (1.38m), House Husbands (1.01m) and CSI (627,000).

MasterChef held at 890,000 for TEN then Elementary (851,000). Returning Modern Family repeats lifted for TEN to 635,000 / 566,000. TEN News was 568,000, Graham Norton was 495,000 and The Simpsons was 461,000.

Grand Designs (943,000) led ABC1 follows by Dream Build (795,000), The Time of Our Lives (747,000), ABC News (680,000), Compass (318,000), Australia’s Remote Islands (280,000) and On Borrowed Time (250,000).

On SBS it was A History of Ancient Britain (296,000), World News Australia (176,000), The Observer Effect (92,000) and The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela (76,000).

Bananas in Pyjamas topped multichannels with 243,000.

Insiders: 176,000 / 87,000, 25,000
The Bolt Report: 150,000
Meet the Press: 97,000 / 146,000

OzTAM Overnights: Sunday 16 June 2013

23 Responses

  1. The ABC should have a decent Thursday night drama series but Crownies was such a disappointment that it probably frightened the programmer to schedule another one there. The ABC’s audience skews heavily to women over 40 so I suppose they thought TTOL would work for them on a Sunday because it was kitchen sink naturalism which is pretty patronising. I suspect it is just too earnest and clichéd and not intelligent or well enough written to have any long term future. The ABC may need more event style Australian drama for this Sunday slot particularly after they loose all the BBC drama.

  2. The ABC made Thursday night it’s premium drama night. But with DVRs the viewing number have been declining and a disappointing <600k.

    So with Paper Giants, Jack Irish and TTOOL they are trying more popular dramas on Sunday nights when more people are watching (instead of Midsomer Murders for pensioners). TTOOL did rate more than 600k on Sunday.

  3. With A Place To Call Home running from 8:45 – 9:45pm, Endeavour is rating 397k for 2 hours from 9:45pm till 11:45pm. It also generates some +7 numbers that given the closeness of battle between Seven and Nine this could tip a few weeks to Seven at the end of the year.

    Seven could put Bones or Castle on at 9:45pm and get 100-200k more for an hour (but they would rate better at 8:45pm some other time) but then they are likely to get less viewers for what follows at 10:45pm.

    Seven is keeping pace with Nine on Sunday nights and Endeavour is still listed for next Sunday at this stage.

  4. I’ll shock no-one by saying I didn’t watch the ABC. Although the 8.30pm show didn’t look like my type of show but I might have tried it previously.

    But what I really want to mention is my problem with how SBS handled promoting The Observer Effect. First the ads are off-putting. I mean you have a journalist spout seeming rubbish that journalism can be some sort of science experiment. Plus you have it in the title. By the way I’ll point out I appreciate good journalism. I’ve watched Lateline for probably 20 years. Also Four Corners is the second longest show I’ve watched for over 30 years since childhood at first on the weekend. Plus I like science programming and documentaries. But this show just isn’t science.

    Next SBS had SBS News mention it and that seriously made me not watch it. The thing SBS did right was mention what guest might show up in an ad during the ad break during the News. But mentioning it during the News already did the damage for me. Another idea is why not show the journalist interviewing someone and showing their response. Rather than spouting nonsense. That way it might interest more people.

  6. I watched Endeavour today…and it was just as good as last week….I really do not understand that enormous drop…cannot see that there was anything else that great on…unless like me…people are watching it after the fact…
    Will be interested to see timeshift figures..not that I think there will be 900,000

  8. I taped it so haven’t watched it yet. Too much on at 8.30 on Sunday night. Already have Elementary, House Husbands & Place To Call Home. I agree, Thursday would be a better night, not much on.

  9. I thought it was ok, and will give it another go. But I do agree with some of the other comments. Took till about 3/4 of the way through to find out where Willian McInness character fitted into the family, brother/brother-in-law/friend? Also the brides’ cut on her arm disappeared/healed rather quickly.

  11. Hmm… I thought TTOOL was a miss, and it supplied some bizarre continuity moments, like when the jilted bride stormed out of the wedding venue – Brighton Sea Baths if I’m not mistaken – immediately finding herself on the walkway over Jacka Boulevard in St Kilda, then into a hotel overlooking what appeared to be Docklands.
    A total distance of about 15km by my reckoning; running the entire distance in a wedding dress and heels, and without even breaking a sweat…

    You can probably get away with that on a show primarily for an overseas audience, but not a local one.

  12. Just throwing my 2 cents into the TTOOL discussion. I thought it had good production values and a good tone (no cheesiness or fake conflict), but I can’t see exactly what audience it’s chasing. It’s too polished and slick to appeal to those who like trashy soap operas. It’s not funny enough to be classified as a dramedy (like House Husbands). It’s not original or perceptive enough to appeal to traditional ABC drama viewers (eg. those who liked Sea Change). I would have thought an ABC audience would like something with a little more depth.

    It’s like a bunch of university graduates got together and wrote what they think an upmarket soap opera should look like.

    And, some of the dialogue was a tad hokey.

  13. Seems bizarre that ABC would schedule this up against 2 other mediocre local productions. Having said that I decided some time ago that I would not be watching this. Claudia Carvan irritates me so much, that I just cannot bare to watch anything she is in.

    Come on Australia produce some decent quality drama instead of the rubbish being served up at present. The only local production currently worth watching is Wentworth.

  15. It looks like all the programs commencing at 9.30-9.45pm have considerably low ratings. I don’t think it is necessarily the content, just the day of the week. A 9.45pm start time on a Sunday doesn’t work for me, so everything from then is PVR’d.
    Hopefully if they shift Endeavour, it goes to 7TWO rather than being dumped altogether.

  16. TTOOL was a real misfire. Agree it didn’t deserve the good reviews. Poorly scripted, outdated, cliche ridden rubbish. I won’t be wasting my time next week.

  17. See ABC viewers flick back to the commercial networks as soon as the credits starts on Grand Designs. The Time of Our Lives was way over-hyped by the critics. Love My Way or Tangle it is not.

    It had a dreadful start with poor exposition. McCrossin failed to establish the relationships between or even the names the main characters leaving you wondering who was who. The acting was a mix of the very good and the very ordinary.

    The wedding just came across as a poorly contrived device with a poor attempt at suspense long after McCrossin made it obvious, to everyone but people who know supposedly know the Groom, that he was pissing off to Pakistan. I guess at least it was better than the bus incident in House Husbands though.

    I switched over to watching Elementary after 15 minutes. I had a look at the rest later and it did get better once McCrossin started developing the characters and relationships in the two families.

    But again there isn’t any point in springing a cliff- hanger of a mistress after you’ve clumsily introduced the facts that McInnes’ s character rebuffs sex twice with his wife twice, we are told he hasn’t had sex with his wife for months and he is heading off to Sydney hours before he should.

    It has some potential but will struggle back from the bad start in a competitive time-slot.

  19. Unfortunatly for ABC their iview app is so good, i tend to watch the other dramas and catch up with the ABC shows at a later time, sometimes just after they have finished.

  20. It seems the twitter issue has been fixed. Last two posts have been tweeted.

    I watched TTOL and really enjoyed. Will be back for more next week.

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