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TEN to improve schedule with Scorpion, Gold Coast Cops, NCIS, Modern Family.

New and returning titles will be on air by the end of the month.

2014-09-13_0145TEN will shake-up its primetime schedule at the end of the month with new and returning titles in a bid to turn around its ratings.

New US drama Scorpion will kick things off at 6:30pm Sunday September 28th, starring Elyes Gabel, Katharine McPhee and Robert Patrick.

Scorpion inspired by a true story, is a high-octane drama about eccentric genius Walter O’Brien and his team of brilliant misfits who comprise the last line of defense against complex, high-tech threats of the modern age. As Homeland Security’s new think tank, O’Brien’s “Scorpion” team includes Toby Curtis, an expert behaviorist who can read anyone; Happy Quinn, a mechanical prodigy; and Sylvester Dodd, a statistics guru.

It will be followed by the season premiere of Modern Family at 7:30pm and a repeat at 8pm.

“The Long Honeymoon & Regrets Only”
Mitch and Cam have returned from their honeymoon and Mitch is acclimating to real life much quicker than Cameron. Meanwhile, Clair is furious with Phil – the only problem is, Phil has no idea why!

On Monday September 29th new factual series Gold Coast Cops premieres at 7:30pm.

Don’t miss the exhilarating, action-packed season premiere of Gold Coast Cops. The team of elite, hand-picked officers discover hom made explosives hidden in the car of a Hell’s Angels member.

It will be followed by former Pay TV series Territory Cops, from the same producer.

Take a behind the scenes look into Australia’s busiest police force. is a nerve-wracking stake-out for our team the wait patiently to catc remote community drug runners who are flying out of town.

A season final of Have You Been Paying Attention? airs at 8:30pm.

On Tuesday September 30th, new NCIS is back in its traditional 8:30pm timeslot.

“Twenty Kicks”
Gibbs and McGee travel to Russia to safely escort home an NCIS computer engineer connected to classified intel, but their mission is compromised while hunted by a Russian mercenary group.

There’s also a blank TBA slot waiting to be filled at 9pm Thursday October 2nd –Party Tricks following Bachelor perhaps?

It’s an improved schedule from what is on offer thanks to the US Fall season kicking off, but there are still some areas of concern. Scorpion currently has Bondi Rescue repeats as its lead-in which would be a disastrous way to launch a new series. Jamie Oliver is still in schedule on Tuesday (no sign of Recipe to Riches yet) and movie repeats still fill other under-performing slots.

It will also come under heavy artillery from Seven and Nine, also fast-tracking some US titles, but viewers will be the winners with plenty of choice.

26 Responses

  1. Got excited when I read the new shows coming on 10, thought at first Gold Coast cops was a new type of “Rush” but alas boring reality show again.

    Are we ever going to get non-reality shows back in abundance ever again? I miss the TV scheduling of 80’s and most of the 90’s, as since then TV has been ruined.

    Channel 9 is totally unwatchable at the moment with The Block and Big Brother and Channel 7 isn’t much better. I am finding myself only recording very little on free-to-air nowadays. I hope things will change eventually but probably not seeing the ratings these reality shows get.

  2. Bad time to pull HYBPA? with it rising in it’s audience the last month or so. Better to leave it on to continue picking up an audience to the end of the year surely?

    I hope The Good Wife returns this year too, I’m itching to see David Hyde Pierce guest star.

  3. Disappointed Wanted hasn’t returned this year. It may not have set the ratings on fire due to being scheduled in the ‘timeslot of doom’ 8:30pm Mondays, but it had an exceptional success rate on assisting with the arrest of criminals featured on the show.

    It would have been excellent new content – something Ten has really lacked over the past 2 months.

  4. What’s going to happen with Bondi Vet when Scorpion starts on Sundays at 6:30 pm? Is it going back to Saturdays? And what’s happening with the Graham Norton Show?

  5. The programmers at TEN have rocks in their head. Sorry but Scorpion at 6:30pm Sunday is a mistake. The show looks great but yet again the programmers at TEN are shooting a show in the foot before it even gets to air. It should be airing at 8:30pm not 6:30pm.

  6. Its just a roll of the dice to try and claw back a few numbers. The same old arguments from the ‘amateur programmers’ are put forward, but it will make very little difference. The trend is “watch what you want when you want” and ch10 are still a little behind on this

  7. @Pertinax – Fair enough I only looked back to the 1st week of the Olympics, where it was pulling 805,000 on the Monday showing (http://tvtonight.com.au/2012/07/monday-30-july-2012.html) against the Olympics and 807,00 on the Tuesday showing (http://tvtonight.com.au/2012/08/tuesday-31-july-2012.html), even after having a double episode on the Sunday. Then eps dropped from the double Sunday (Aug 05th) ep to 738,000, Monday ep to 742,000 and Tuesday ep to 769,000 (Aug 06th) in the second week of Olympics.

    It did bounce back to 883,000 the following Sunday though (Aug 12th) and went down on the Monday (Aug 13th) eps, but yeah by today’s standards those would be good, so I guess I did overstate it and stand corrected. However I still think they’re good figures against the London Olympics and think TEN would do better to slot Scorpion in at 7:30pm rather than 6:30pm.

  8. Although Ten have some new and strong content, I’m not sure they are programming it correctly. David Attenborough use to draw big numbers for 9 on Sunday at 6.30pm, so perhaps they should consider moving him there, and adding a celebrity Family Feud weekly event episode, then having drama from 8.30pm. I use to love relaxing on a Sunday night and watching TV, but there is literally nothing on anymore (over X Factor, 60 Mins/Sunday Night can be good depending on the story).

  9. Gee whiz TEN, a new drama that looks good buried at 6.30 pm with daylight saving coming on. Actually starting the week after.

    Surely Monday nights after Gold Coast Cops would be a better spot instead of that awful Have you been paying attention.

    Lawrence Mooney’s show Dirty Laundry Live on ABC 2 is the same kind of thing but done much much better.
    Or put it on in the summer ratings non period. but 6.30 Sunday look at how good Merlin is and look at the figures that got. Mind you i am enjoying the repeats on Saturday night. After years of working on Sat nights I like TV……nothing much on.

  10. @Cam Reed
    Once Up A Time’s ratings dropped quickly towards 700k (they were still expecting 1m+ for anything before 10:30pm back then).

    So Seven dumped it from its regular slot because they no longer wanted to show it in prime-time. Instead they burnt it off at 3 to 4 episode per week as counter programming against the @l^mp!cs. This was successful at minimising Seven’s loses without using up top rating content.

  11. I remember when Seven had Once Upon A Time on Sunday at 7:30pm and it went real well ratings wise, even up against the London Olympics when they started on Nine. Then Seven messed with the schedule putting it on 3 times a week, then on later and the ratings dropped eventually moving it to 7TWO.

    So to me the Sunday 7:30pm slot is a spot that I think TEN should put Scorpion on given the past, 6:30pm Sunday seems too early for a show that looks like a PG version of Numb3rs, guess time will tell on it though.

  12. It’s about time someone did something to boost Sunday nights, and every other night for that matter.

    We absolutely despaired last Sunday, nothing whatsoever appealed, nothing but reality shows, interminable talent shows and so-called current affairs, which are anything but. They’re just longer versions of TT and A “Current” Affair. Bloody awful.

    The whole TV landscape has been like that seemingly forever.

  13. We shall see. Family Feud has boosted The Project and helped Ten’s early evenings but they are still really struggling after that when Masterchef isn’t on, especially on the key nights at the start of the week. Seven and Nine will also be rejigging their lineups for spring with The Blacklist and possibly new TBBT somewhere.

    “Clair is furious with Phil – the only problem is, Phil has no idea why!”. In what episode of Modern Family is that not the case? It’s ratings have been dropping.

    Scorpion is inspired by reality about as much as a bad acid trip is. The pilot has been savaged by US critics as a failed attempt at a techier TBBT.

    Border Patrol, The Force etc are all rating a couple of hundred thou lower than in previous years.

    NCIS new episodes, where most of the money is going on producers and or stars, isn’t rating much better than repeats here, and has even…

  14. Although I’m really excited to see Scorpion having it at 6:30pm has me really worried. Firstly because at that time it is inevitable that It will rate poorly (back in the day the hit Merlin could only pull 400k so what’s a new series in this market going to get?). Secondly that it will be censored because it’s before 8:30pm. I’m not sure what it’s rated in the US but I’m sure it’s above PG. Hopefully I’m wrong on both counts but history shows otherwise. On HYBPA it’s amazing to see it get to 50+ eps. Will be interesting to see if it is renewed.

  15. Surely they can put New Simpsons on Sunday, or maybe do a weekend edition of Family Feud?

    Gold Coast cops looks and sounds ok but X Factor and the Block have 7:30 Monday covered 🙁

    10 need to bring Hamish and Andy back to the network

  16. Why would you launch Scorpion at 630 Sunday? The trailer looked good albeit a bit heavy for a 630 timeslot. If it is indeed only a PG show why not Tuesdays and shift Jamie to Sunday 630??

  17. US drama at Sundays 6.30 feels totally wrong.

    Modern Family they have killed with a million timeslots and repeats.

    Who would have though Family Feud could be hailed as one of their big successes

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