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Dallas is a switch-off

Ratings: Dallas takes a dive in the ratings -but will numbers improve with Timeshifted data?

Updated:  Dallas averaged a dismal 206,000 last night. Nine will be looking to Timeshifted results in a week’s time for it’s real performance, if it doesn’t move it in the meantime.

Dallas was not the only concern last night. Much bigger problems exist at TEN with I Will Survive on just 338,000. By now TEN should have bumped the show in its schedule, but as many are asking -“what have they got to replace it with?”

Wednesday was an easy win for Seven with 33.4% then Nine 22.5%, ABC 20.8%, TEN 17.1% and SBS 6.2%.

The X Factor was again #1 with 1.54m for Seven then Seven News (1.29m), Today Tonight (1.15m), Criminal Minds (1.02m), Home and Away (995,000), Deal or No Deal (530,000) and Covert Affairs (487,000).

Nine News was 1.1m for Nine followed by Big Brother (1.02m), A Current Affair (960,000), The Farmer Wants a Wife (784,000), Embarrassing Bodies (651,000), Hot Seat (569,000). Dallas was just 206,000 with a repeat of House Husbands at 108,000.

ABC News continues to win its timeslot as an alternative to lighter content with 1.12m for ABC1, then Gruen Planet (917,000), Qi (774,000), 7:30 (750,000), Randling (495,000), Would I Lie to You? (420,000), Paralympics highlights (319,000) and At the Movies (312,000).

There were barely two performers for TEN being Puberty Blues (728,000) and TEN News (702,000) but TEN was again in fourth place. Modern Family was 519,000. The Project 6pm (376,000) and I Will Survive (338,000) both trailed The Bold and the Beautiful (407,000).

Meet the Amish (326,000) was best for SBS ONE then Bears of the Last Frontier (321,000), Sandhurst Military Academy (215,000) and World News Australia (167,000). On SBS TWO The Bridge was 101,000.

Neighbours topped multichannels with 321,000.

The Morning Show:  159,000
Mornings: 121,000
The Talk: 28,000

Wednesday 5 September 2012 

44 Responses

  1. I enjoyed the first 14 or so series of Dallas and I enjoy the remake and enjoyed only the one episode last night instead of the advertised 2 episodes. But who in their right mind would watch the show on before it ./ ugh. And if they advertise it at 10.00 pm start it then not at 10.13. Maybe we should all go back and lobby our politicians for ad content to be regulated once more and or make it legal for the poor community radio and TV stations to show or air more than 5 minutes of ads per hour. I am sure the commercial stations would arc up about what is the fastest growing sector in media and that is community radio being allowed to have more than 5 minutes worth of sponsorship per hour. Community TV I believe is the same but we do not have it in Tasmania!

  2. I kinda feel sorry for 9 – yes, you read it correctly – I feel sorry for 9.

    Think about it – just about every OS show they run they’ve inherited through the $2M per week deal with Warners over 5 years.

    No longer cherry picking the better shows from other US networks – they’ve been left with a cesspool of $#!+ from their programming partners, WB.

  3. Dallas did not rate well. 6.9m watched the first episode then its ratings plunged to just over 4m an episode. That is nothing for the US. Dallas shows on TNT cable station and doesn’t have anywhere near the ratings of a US network show.

    As for Channel 10’s lineup.
    The Simpsons doesn’t even make the top 20 on secondary channels. Neigbours is rating 300,000 and was only rating 600,000 before it was moved and would do significantly worse than that now.

    The project will not do that well against BB and Home and Away and the ABC news which are all rating 1M+. Moving the Project to 7pm may be an idea, but only if Channel 10 have something to fill 6-7pm with which they don’t.

    As for the other suggestions the first 4 seasons of Psych have run endlessly on TV1 on cable and it wasn’t rating well enough to hold it’s spot on One!
    Monk has already finished screening years ago on both Channel 10 and TV1 more repeats would rate nothing.

  4. “Dallas was just 206,000”

    After the way it’s been treated, with no chance to build an audience, why are network programmers the only ones surprised by this?

  5. @bonrad and David….Obviously no-one consciously sets out to make it fail (unless we’re into some bizarre conspiracy theory), however, networks can indeed act in ways that bring about failure. I think there’s an important distinction there.

    And when they do it again and again and again….no wonder bonrad asserts what they did.

  6. Some good comments here. Ten must move “I will Survive: away from X Factor, its so obvious they must be nuts. Someone suggested a third Thursday ep first, good idea. A weekday change in their lineup also suggested here is excellent.

    David you may say no channel sets up a programme to fail, then Nine’s shockingly shoddy way of treating “Dallas” must simply be bad management. Its rating well everywhere else in the world and was a hit here first time round, Nine must proceed with it and promote it more and stop playing with its timeslot. Having a double episode that suddenly becomes one episode is total madness. Best if they leave it to one hour a week at 10pm on Wednesdays and stop fiddling with it and do some more high level and clever promotion and do what so many people here have suggested, re run the old series (or the last 2 years) late or on Gem.

  7. Sorry David, my comment was meant to be sarcastic not conspiracy theory talk. (I must remember the printed word has no tone!) In any case, I think the chopping and changing of Dallas’ viewing times certainly won’t help its ratings.

  8. I was looking forward to this and there was no way I was going to be held to ransom by the inept programming department of a less then switched on commercial network.
    In short the first series is brilliant much better then I had imagined and if the pilot rates an 8/10 add .1 for every Epp in the first series, one of the best conclusions to a first series I have seen in a long while.

  9. Ten has the rights to *plenty* of shows that it doesn’t even bother airing. They killed off Rush. They only air reruns of shows like Modern Family and Rules of Engagement. Then there’s quality like Monk, Psych and Better Off Ted, that gets an occasional run in the wee hours on an alt channel, if it’s reallll lucky. They destroyed House the same way Nine manhandles Top Gear and that show was *huge* overseas.

    If they had any sense they’d get off this ‘reality tv’ ride before it completely explodes in their face.

  10. They are stuffing Dallas around so much that I think Channel 9 must be deliberately setting it up to fail. If that’s the case their strategy is working a treat.

  11. Dallas is great – I think it is the best remake yet – not sure why it’s not working here – it’s doing OK in the US.. Everyone that has seen it loves it..

    As for Ten and IWS – they should have put it on at 8.30 – so that it wasn’t up against XFactor.. It never really had a chance..

  12. Channel 10, Oh dear!! It’s bleeding obvious…
    News at 5, Simpsons at 6, Neighbours at 6.30, Project at 7 and then go from there. Forget about all this multi channeling business and get 10 right.

  13. I switched to 9 at 10.00 to watch Dallas but was rocked on two fromts. Firstly i was subject to watching Embarrasing Bodies and I just don’t want to see this kind of $#!+ on my tv (literally). Then there was an add for an encore of House Husbands and 9 had recently improved greatly with their start and finish times. So I started to wonder if Dalls was actually going to be on. Other people may have thought that too, hence the low numbers.

  14. From reading through the responses, is this simply a result of a massive 9 programming error?

    If they have ruined a show that had pulled them a huge audience simply by programming mismanagement, will 9 execs finally lift their heads and listen to their diminishing fan base?

    It seems you can’t predict where in Aussie you might actually see what 9 announces it will show; you can’t rely on published start and end times; you can’t rely on how the series will be be shown (e.g. single or doubles).

  15. “I Will Survive” isn’t a bad show. If Ten moved it to Thursday nights, it might get a bigger audience. However, Hugh Sheriden was the wrong choice to be the host.
    I really enjoyed “The Bridge” on SBS2, as good as “The Killing”.

  16. Erratic programming plus the double episode last week has killed Dallas.

    Week 1 9.10-10.10pm. Week 2 9.10-11.00pm (double episode). Week 3 – was to be 10.00-12.00 but became 10.12-11.00 at the last minute.

  17. That was a bit of a tough night for ch9. Good to see intelligent informed news rating strongly on ABC, hopefully people are tiring of the brain rotting mush masquerading as news on the comm ftas. Ch10 (R.I.P.)….poor souls, what are they going to do?

  18. Great numbers for puberty blues considering the lead in and numbers for every other show!

    Imagine what it would do on 7 though! (Until they screw it up by splitting up one season into 2 halves)

  19. I’ve got no interest in Dallas but it seems to have premiered in the UK last night and an unusually high number of my Facebook mates over there are raving about how good it was in their status updates.

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