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Whatever happened to US drama?

Ratings: Once unassailable drama imports,The Good Doctor & NCIS are struggling to grab 300,000 viewers.

They were once unassailable drama imports but lately The Good Doctor and NCIS are struggling to grab 300,000 in overnight metro viewers.

While they do lift in Timeshifted (and NCIS reruns are the mainstay of the leading multichannel) both are impacted by their lead-ins and the heavy competition over on Nine. Varying start times is also a factor, and in some cases confusion around new vs rerun episodes.

Married at First Sight again won its slot and topped the demos at 1.04m viewers.

That was well in front of 7:30 (610,000), The Amazing Race Australia (503,000), Foreign Correspondent (434,000),  Britain’s Got Talent (321,000) and Great Australian Railway Journeys (242,000).

Later Exposed: The Ghost Train Fire was up slightly on last week at 399,000 then Botched (354,000), The Good Doctor (308,000) and NCIS (282,000 / 202,000).

Nine network won Tuesday with 32.3% then Seven 23.8%, ABC 18.3%, 10 17.7% and SBS 7.8%.

Nine News was #1 at 1.05m / 1.01m. A Current Affair also won its slot at 752,000 then Hot Seat (452,000 / 281,000).

Seven News was best for Seven at 1.00m / 958,000. Home & Away (568,000) and The Chase (506,000 / 317,000) followed. The Resident was 178,000.

ABC News drew 700,000 for ABC. The Drum managed 207,000.

The Project pulled 439,000 / 282,000 for 10. 10 News First was 369,000 / 230,000.

On SBS it was SBS World News (188,000 / 151,000), Insight (150,000), Dateline (98,000), Mastermind (80,000), and The Feed (59,000).

Bluey led multichannels at 168,000.

Sunrise: 274,000
Today: 232,000
News Breakfast: 122,000 / 86,000

OzTAM Overnights: Tuesday 23 March 2021

41 Responses

  1. From a different viewpoint, I just don’t find US shows that good anymore. I keep trying ones that have been hailed as huge, but I find US drama to be overwrought and humourless. That is why our local dramas are so much better – we blend drama with real life humour and ordinariness. US shows are just so intense, it feels fake.

    There are limited number of settings (emergency services, crime/legal – wow, I couldn’t even think of a third!) so they all seem to be same-same.

    Some US comedies are good, but they are gems to find amongst some terrible stuff.

    I wish the commercial channels would turn their eyes away from second-rate US shows, and give us much more from the UK or Europe, where the dramas show more real-life lightness and humour.

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