Networks hold off on big guns
AS ANYONE who mentions programming and performance in 2008 will duly note, this is an Olympics year, with all the attendant implications for Seven, the main broadcast network. Being the broadcaster of the Olympics means more than just the promise of a couple of weeks of spekkie ratings in August. The Olympics offer an excellent promotional platform from which to launch the network into the final round of the ratings season, which ends in November. In the lead-up to the Games, and throughout the telecast, Seven will be able to remind us of all the goodies it has up its sleeve.
There is a view that Seven has miscalculated in this Olympics year, that it has held back too much of its firepower for the second half (or “the back end”, to use industry-speak), and therefore failed to establish the kind of decisive lead that it should have over its long-dominant but now weakened rival, Nine.
Seven did not kick off the year with Dancing With the Stars, a Tuesday night winner that can regularly draw 1.8 million viewers. It has padded Mondays with repeats of Border Security, albeit ones that have been rating well (1.51 million last week). It has run with US imports ? Desperate Housewives, Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, Ugly Betty, Brothers & Sisters ? but held on to the new stuff: Lipstick Jungle, from Sex and the City writer Candace Bushnell and Private Practice, the Grey’s Anatomy spin-off.
For the second half, Seven is planning to run another season of the cop show success, City Homicide, the new local series, Packed to the Rafters, starring Rebecca Gibney and Erik Thomson, Dancing With the Stars, with Shane Bourne rumoured to replace Daryl Somers, and new episodes of Border Security.
Meanwhile, Nine is planning more of the same: David Attenborough, CSIs, more Ladette to Lady. It will also run second seasons of The Farmer Wants a Wife and The Chopping Block, the last of McLeod’s Daughters and a new batch of RPA. There will be more rampaging Ramsay. Among the US imports, there’s Pushing Daisies and Chuck.
There will also be a season of Celebrity Singing Bee, which will be fronted by Nine’s go-to guy, Tim (Wheel of Fortune) Campbell. As well, move over Gladiators, there’s Hole in the Wall, a competition show that involves sporting challenges, spandex and a pool.
Ten is looking forward to Kenny’s World Toilet Tour starring Shane Jacobson as waste-management technician, Dexter (formerly of Foxtel), second seasons of Californication and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader, and Australian Idol.
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