Television

Terry TV Tutorial No 15: How to screw up a Wednesday night   Author: eNews staff and agencies | Nov 3, 2007, 12:03

Sometimes TV networks are their own worst enemies.

Nine's tribulations are well known for being self inflicted, but its rare to learn of one at Seven.

Seven didn't run Prison Break Wednesday night. That was understandable as it had lost ground since starting on Seven's quick 'turnaround and to air' process called "Fastracked".

It looked as though Seven had rested it from the schedule because of the loss of audience.

In its place Criminal Minds aired, in addition to its Monday night outing.

Criminal Minds didn't do well, averaging just over 700,000 viewers because Seven's dud of the year, Las Vegas, suffered another loss of viewers at 8.30 to 9.30 and its average fell to less than 600,000 viewers.

It cost Seven the night. It had been competitive up to 8 pm, even against the Chaser and Spicks and Specks on the ABC (1.3 and 1.4 million viewers respectively) and House on Ten (1.4 Million and second on the night behind The Chaser).

But later Wednesday Seven let it be known that Prison Break wasn't taken out of the schedule, it had been pre-empted by the final game of the World Series baseball on Fox in the US and was returning next week at 9.30 pm.

And Las Vegas was departing for summer or even the time vault and Criminal Minds was moving forward an hour to 8.30 pm.

All this could have been avoided if Seven had been upfront with the programming changes and not played secret squirrel.

Prison Break isn’t the smartest of TV series, but it has a core of fans. It won’t be featuring prominently in 2008 for Seven. It has a larger number of new programs in the US doing well.

Finally, that last World Series game on Fox was out rated for an hour by Seven’s Desperate Housewives on ABC.

Desperate Housewives – with 18.1 million viewers – toppled the Red Sox’s World Series winning game on Sunday in the United States.

Across its hour, Desperate Housewives’ new series bettered the baseball and Cold Case by 6.4 million viewers overall and the 18.1 million viewer audience was down only a fraction on last week’s 18.2 million, despite the World Series.

Brothers & Sisters also did well – with 12.8 million viewers against the baseball.

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