Television

Can headLand fill a summer void?   Author: eNews staff and agencies | Nov 28, 2005, 09:32

Is eight times a week enough to win over viewers?

At the end of the final episode of Home and Away on the Seven Network Friday night a quite prophetic piece of dialogue was uttered.

In a quick series of cuts from the 2006 season designed to hold viewer interest over the summer break, the last words said on Home and Away for 2005 were: "I can't feel a pulse".

Why prophetic, well on Monday night Home and Away will be replaced four nights a week by headLand and at the moment you'd be doing well to find any sign of life in that one.

Each week Seven screens two and a half hours of Home and Away.

Next week we will get four hours of new headLand episodes and then the same number of repeats each week. That's eight hours in total replacing two and a half hours.

Seven is doing everything to embed headLand in the viewers' eyeballs.

But surprisingly that ‘lack of a pulse’ comment could described the final 2005 episode of Home and Away.

It was flat, with story lines untied all over the place, and a cyclone/hurricane, big nasty storm coming in 2006.

'Quick rush to our shelters and wait, no we can't we'll miss headLand, no let’s rush to the shelters'.

It was a curiously flat way to finish a very successful year.

I know there's a host of ways of ending a season with bombings, murder, stalker, car accident etc. But the threat of a cyclone in 2006?

On the last episode of Home and Away there was a naughty wedding, a pregnancy/break-up, a clash between god and boyfriend: not bad, not stunning or ‘who shot JR” At times it had a well, headLand tinge to it.

What's needed is a Bec returning. Now that would have been drama.

But I suppose my quibbling won't matter to viewers. They have supported it in droves, especially since Mrs Hewitt left.

It has completely done over Nine's Temptation to the point where Nine and producers Grundys will be having a long hard look at the quiz show over the break.

There is nothing really going for it except that its warm comforting, occasionally challenging and that's about it.

It skews old and will continue doing so.

Lavina Nixon is to real talent from my point of view and Mr Ed (Phillips) is the human equivalent of the famous talking horse. He's just boring.

He and Glenn Ridge would make pretty uninspiring dinner companions.

Ridge's work on the Car and Boat shows, the in-house infomercial programs for Nine and the ACP car and boat mags is competent for a former quiz show host, but that's all you can say.

And that's all you can say for Mr Ed on Temptation.

Nine is going to run Family Fud at 5.30 pm as a news lead in everywhere bar Brisbane.

That will limit the push it can give (Nine News in Brisbane gets a push from Brisbane Extra and the Gold Coast news. There's no need for Bert in Brissie.)

But would Nine get more oomph from Bert by switching programs: Family Feud to 7 pm and Temptation to 5.30 pm.

That way Nine could take advantage of Bert's undoubted talent and latent appeal, still there at 67 going on 68 and the chance to replicate Gra Gra on Blankety Blanks. It would still sjew old, but would have more chance of finding younger viewers than Temptation.

But Temptation is too expensive for 5.30 pm and Family Feud will probably be too cheap (although Bert’s million bucks means it will be hard to break-even)

But Nine will have to be trying new ideas very quickly.

The 7.30 pm slots Monday and Tuesday are now vacant and weak and there’s nothing on the horizon in summer for Nine that could be used when ratings resume on February 12.

Joey bores us from Monday night at 8.00 pm in summer. A year ago Nine was talking Joey up as the Friends' replacement. No way. Before Joey will will be riveted by Two and a Half Men.

Week nights at 7 pm this week Nine inflicts the King of Queens on us once again. Could that be Sam Chisholm’s secret plan to make us watch headLand?

At least Seven is trying to make headLand work with viewers in the soft summer season.

But a pulse still has to be found and even if the pace picks up from next week onwards, it will still have a lot of work to reclaim Home and Away viewers.

The first season of headLand is already completed so there's no way it can be re-cut or given the eggbeater treatment to help find the pulse.

Some viewers would argue, give it a bomb, quickly, but that's too precipitate.

Home and Away took a while to become bedded down and even now has storylines that make headLand look like literature.

But chances have to be taken with dramas and soaps, otherwise you never get success.

Despite the silly decision made to can Always Greener, the decision still burnt into the bums (brains) of Seven executives is Neighbours and the way it was canned, only to pop up on Ten and be very, very, very successful.

Both Seven and Nine were surprised by the way Home and Away took off from around late August-early September onwards and finished the year with surge.

Home and Away will earn Seven premiums from advertisers next year as a result.

Over on Nine Temptation will wash its face with ad revenues, but that's about all.

That's why risks are taken to try and find a program that will earn more than it rates.

That's why Seven needs headLand, not now, but in 2007 in case Home and Away starts boring for Australia.

But for now nurse, that pulse, feel here.. ooohhh doctor....'

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