Television

The Nine Network can't win a trick   Author: eNews staff and agencies | Oct 23, 2007, 21:04

David Gyngell's first programming move at the Nine Network in his second coming fails spectacularly and a high profile new US program from Hugh Jackman is canned in America after two eps, meaning will have to find a Monday night replacement for Viva Laughlin a lot faster than it thought.

Viva Laughlin failed on Nine last night in the slot with just over 830,000. In the US it lost a third of its audience, from just over 9 million to barely six million, and it was 'boned'.

Here, the expanded 90 minute, $5 million version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire bombed last night, its audience worse than that for Temptation, the program it replaced on the night.

The failure calls into question the worth of using Eddie McGuire as host of the program, calls into question the worth of using a program Nine 'rested' 18 months ago, and calls into question the worth of replacing Temptation at all.

Millionaire averaged 868,000 across the 90 minutes from 7 pm in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. But in Adelaide and Perth it was coded as a separate program for Oztam ratings purposes and it averaged 228,000. Putting the two figures together gives an average of 1.089 million people for the 90 minutes.

Even combining the two gives a lower audience figure than Temptation for last Monday of 1.189 million, or the average for last week for Temptation of 1.133 million.

The separate codings were a mistake by the Nine programming department. Even though Adelaide and Perth are owned by WIN, Nine Sydney does the coding for the Oztam ratings system.

The figures will be combined for the final Monday night figures but it’s an unfortunate error as Millionaire should have really started with a bang instead it of a whimper like last night.

Millionaire was of course more popular in Melbourne than anywhere else with Eddie fronting it: the 408,000 audience was competitive: the 290,000 people average in Sydney wasn't and we are talking about national TV here.

But in Sydney the 7pm ABC News and the 7.30 report was more popular than Eddie from 7 pm to 8 pm. The ABC Mews in Melbourne was within 1,000 viewers of Millionaire and more people watched the ABC News in Brisbane than watched Eddie.

The bigger Millionaire was Gyngell's call. The previous management of Nine, Jeff Browne, and the programmers, had decided to 'rest' Temptation from the schedule for the rest of the year and strip Millionaire into specially cut down eps of half an hour with a change of rules.

When Gyngell returned last month to check out Nine, he changed that to make Millionaire a 90 minute program over six eps on Monday nights, with Temptation running Tuesday to Friday.

That hasn't worked.

But worse was to await Nine last night.

Viva Laughlin averaged just 833,000 last night at 8.30 to 9.30 pm and drifted between third and fourth in the slot with the ABC's Media Watch overtaking it towards the end.

At 9.30 or thereabouts, Nine showed the first run movie, Monster in Law starring Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez. How low did it go? It averaged just 490,000. That was a distant fourth from 9.35 to around 10.25 when Enough Rope finished on the ABC with 1.017 million people or so. The movie moved into third, then second.

Last night, and especially 7 pm to 9.30 pm is a fine example of why people won't watch Nine and what confronts David Gyngell when he returns in a few days time to run Nine.

Viewers no longer expect anything interesting, or worth tuning in or switching channels for. The success of 60 Minutes and the worm on Sunday night was an exception, not a sign of Nine's comeback.

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