★★★★★ 0/5

Gruen makes it tough for SBS drama

Ratings: Gruen was the top entertainment show for Wednesday, but Alex Dimitriades drama did lift SBS share.

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2015-10-08_1013

It was always going to be a big ask for a new SBS drama to draw an audience without having warmed up the timeslot with a drama audience.

Last night The Principal drew 361,00 viewers, landing fifth in its timeslot. However it was an improvement on its last drama Better Man‘s 255,000 and did lift SBS share.

Winning the timeslot was ABC’s Gruen with 926,000 -the top entertainment show of the night.

TEN’s Bachelorette was also a winner with 918,000, despite a 74,000 drop from last Wednesday.

Celebrity Apprentice also dipped for Nine, down 46,000. The Blacklist did reasonable business for Seven while The Player tries to draw in a  crowd at 9:30.

Seven network won with 26.3% then Nine 26.0%, TEN 20.3%, ABC 20.0% and SBS 7.4%.

Seven News (935,000 / 913,000) was best for Seven then The Force (792,000), Home and Away (788,000), Border Security (774,000), The Blacklist (586,000), The Chase (559,000 / 394,000) and The Player (369,000).

Nine News (1.03m / 1.02m) topped the night for Nine then A Current Affair (957,000), The Block (837,000), Celebrity Apprentice (547,000) and Hot Seat (526,000). Justin Bieber Roast was 229,000.

The Bachelorette (918,000) won its timeslot for TEN. The Project was 587,000 / 414,000. Montreal Comedy Gala was 511,000, and TEN Eyewitness News was 471,000.

Gruen scored 926,000 for ABC followed by ABC News (852,000), the final Utopia (756,000), 7:30 (686,000), How Not to Behave (476,000) and Changing Minds (361,000).

On SBS The Principal drew 361,000 (a replay was 99,000), Great Continental Railways was 365,000, The Queen’s Mother in Law was 198,000 and SBS World News was 127,000.

7TWO’s Inspector Lynley Mysteries topped multichannels with 253,000.

Today: 339,000
Sunrise: 332,000
ABC News Breakfast: 99,000 / 43,000

OzTAM Overnights: Wednesday 7 October 2015

44 Responses

  3. i enjoyed Gruen again last night. very funny. I was surprised Russel Howcroft didnt say that a Virgin Australia plane flying over the MCG and its melbourne’s skyline captured by 7’s cameras was genius. he actually pilloried it.

  4. I enjoyed 7s lineup border the force blacklist the player glad they gave blacklist a better time after stuffing it around last series and it did better even after they sent it later in the night last time how did Hereos did after being shafted to 10:40?

    2. i found the show to be very disappointing, not great ratings anyway but i think it will get worse as curious watchers like me tune out & it will get dumped. I felt like i was watching some sort of cheap 90’sclone of the Scream movie & not in a good way. The humour just isn’t clever enough to overcome the characters being plain annoying. I guess i mostly wanted to see JL Curtis whom i adore.

  6. I had a diverse night with The Block, The Principal & Scream Queens.
    It is great to see Salvatore Coco on The Principal. In his younger days he would have ben cast as the teen rebel.

  8. Pvr work out last night. Recorded pretty much everything 7mate love all the pawn shows. Recorded the principal and guilty pleasure the bachelorette. David can you tell me please what major crimes rated I think last nights episode was the best one of series exciting and tense.

  9. The Principal was very good …not outstanding but still well worth watching.
    Alex was compelling as usual and the young actor playing Tarek was also excellent.
    Agree with some comments here that we have seen this concept of disenfranchised , rebellious students versus authority/ “the establishment” many times before but with recent local events in the news, the subject matter is right on the mark.
    Great to see Alex and Salvatore Coco ( Heartbreak High) reunited again .
    Surprised they didn’t ask Abbi Tucker back to play the policewoman or one of the school counsellors.
    I will definitely be watching the remaining 3 eps.

  10. At least there are captions. If you want to catch-up, Ondemand only has captions on the SBS website & small subset of devices via the app. This is pretty poor form given the high rate of app/mobile viewing these days. (NB iview app *does* have–rather small–captions for all.)
    Also, just a heads up relating to ABC captions, specifically the annoyingly delayed & sometimes garbled live captions on the Wed/Thu shows (Gruen/Chaser/Weekly et al). I’ve noticed the next-day/few days later repeat screenings on ABC2 & then ABC usually have cleaned-up in-sync captions. Makes for a much more intelligible viewing experience! (Unfortunately those tidied-up captions don’t always make it onto iview, tho’!)

        1. well said, i don’t think the lack of winners is a problem as long as the gameplay is compelling & contestants not too boring. It seems to have improved alot this week, at the start there were too many dud contestants. I’ve never been much of an A O Keefe fan but he is doing a great job with this.

  12. All the green colour filters in the world couldn’t disguise the bad script, directing and acting in The Principle. I really wanted to like it, but felt let down by its lack of nuance and poor, basic, heavy handed writing. Will give it another go in the interest of fairness, but doubt its shortcomings will improve.

    Once again Changing Minds was a brilliantly executed program – emotional, enlightening, thought provoking and entertaining. It really does embody everything good about the ABC. Well done to all involved and looking forward to the final instalment tonight.

    1. i agree about Changing Minds being brilliant. It felt like watching something validating for both the mentally ill & their families & educational for outsiders looking in. Great work ABC!

  13. The Principal was OK, but my problem with it is that it looked like we’ve seen it all before. Yup, a young idealistic teacher (we know this because he tells us) turns up at a run-down inner city school full of kids in trouble and cynical teachers. Yup, there’s a lot of shouting and swearing. Yup, there’s a potential love interest, who’s going to be held hostage or threatened with violence at some point in the future. Yup, the cliches just keep on coming.

    Still, it’s better than 800 Words. I just wish we’d make something “out there” and original instead of lame relationship melodramas and knock-offs of overseas genre shows.

    1. Are you confusing genre elements with cliches though? Yes we have seen the inspirational teacher / classroom before on To Sir with Love, Dead Poets Society etc. Have we seen it in south western Sydney in 2015? Nope.

      1. Actually David, Once Upon A Time In Punchbowl told the real story I suspect Dimitriades’ character is loosely based on. That of Jihad Dib who turned the notoriously tough Punchbowl Boys into a respected community facility. So yes, in a way, we have seen it in South Western Sydney on our screens in recent years – albeit factually not fictionally.

          1. I disagree. SBS’s core audience will be well aware of Jihad Dib and his story. Don’t forget that SBS attracts a fairly small, niche crowd. Also, I would think that The Principle would attract a lot of interest in the area it is set. Plus Dib is no stranger to the media, has been written about in many papers and his work, including that at Punchbowl Boys High, very well known, not just in the area but across Australia and even to those who may not typically tune into SBS. He is prominent enough to have been elected to state parliament.

          2. I don’t make the numbers up. The drama attracted a bigger audience than the doco. It did have a murder mystery element. Anyway, moving on.

      2. The Principal was more full of stereotypes than characters.

        Charismatic Headmaster as saviour of a a trouble school battling a non-caring bureaucracy, poor teachers who have given up and rebellious students is an old story. Hollywood has done it, the media report on education through this narrative all the time.

        PBS Newshour does a year long report on a crusading headmaster all the time. Though without the happy endings. In Washington a union busting Headmistress in Washington was deposed by the Union lead political campaign, one in Ohio was fired by a school board in the middle of filming. The New Orleans one ended up with the Charter schools being regulated to stop them suspending and expelling poor and disabled students to duke the stats.

        Hopefully the mystery will get more interesting than just showing unidentified figures in hoodies.

    2. I think we were watching different shows. I didn’t see anything cliché’ about it and I haven’t watched a show quite like it before. There isn’t a show on tv that hasn’t borrowed at least one idea from somewhere.

  14. Watched Primeseven from 7pm til the end of The Blacklist then flicked it over to WIN(Nine) to see who was fired on Celeb, caught the last 5 minutes (which is all I good handle)

  16. Gruen was great again.
    Utopia was hilarious again. Fantastic second season (fingers crossed for more!)
    The Principal was also very good.
    The Blacklist changed it up and was better for it.
    The Player was ok, I’m willing to give it a second crack if channel Seven decides to keep it on air after 369,000 people tuned in (post 9:30 pm it has to be noted…)

  17. I taped The Principal on my PVR for later viewing and watched The Bachelorette on a slightly delayed viewing which meant my PVR couldn’t accommodate Gruen but will happily watch this on ABC iview later. It’s a pity 7.30 shows can’t finish at 8.30 so there is no overlap. It just seems to be the norm on commercial networks as they try to outdo each other. SBS and ABC on the other hand now how to edit and/or tell the time but it means I have to decide whether I miss the beginning or end of a show. Thank goodness for PVRs, ABC iview and SBS on Demand.

    2. ABC air an extended edition of Gruen (called Gruen XL) at 8.30 Thurs if that’s a better time to watch. I believe this edition is the one available on iView

    3. One benefit of watching Gruen on iView is that you can choose to see the extended version with an extra 9 minutes. Some of it is padding but you also get some additional commentary.

  18. The principle was good. I thought it would be really dark but it wasn’t as dark as the promos made it out to be. I will be a returning viewer for the next episode. Had the subtitles on as a back up and there were quite a few errors in it. At least 3 times full sentences were missed. This was not good for those who are actually hearing impaired and rely on those captions.

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