★★★★★ 0/5

803,000 as House Rules fails launch test

Ratings: Seven's House Rules underperforms -even lower than Celebrity Splash and The Renovators launches.

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2013-05-15_1006On this post-Budget day there are a lot of news headlines about awful set of numbers but none of them relate to the launch of Seven’s House Rules last night.

The show launched with just 803,000 viewers, which in Seven terms is cause for alarm. The show was soundly beaten by Nine’s renovation show The Block (1.3m).

But to put it into other contexts, Celebrity Splash launched to 1.31m. It was even lower than TEN’s Renovators launch in 2011 (939,000) and Excess Baggage on Nine (885,000). Seven’s decision to launch Celebrity Splash out of its My Kitchen Rules appears to have impacted on the network’s momentum. Seven will be hoping for a lift when it gets to its big house reveal episode. Whether that’s enough to lock in new viewers remains to be seen.

Meanwhile moving The Voice to 8pm has also seen its numbers drop to 1.6m, but within a larger plan of partnering with The Block, Nine easily won the night but Seven held onto second thanks to other shows such as Packed to the Rafters.

Nine’s share was 33.4% then Seven 25.8%, ABC 17.7%, TEN 16.6% and SBS 6.5%.

The Voice topped the night with 1.6m for Nine but it also ran 30 minutes over and evening numbers will need to be adjusted.  The Block was 1.3m, Nine News was 1.29m, ACA was 1.07m and Celebrity Apprentice Boardroom was 749,000.

Seven News (1.3m) was best for Seven then Today Tonight (1.09m), Packed to the Rafters (1.08m), Home and Away (891,000), House Rules (803,000), Deal or No Deal (567,000), Border Security: International (470,000) and Travel Unravelled (269,000).

ABC News was 899,000 for ABC1 followed by New Tricks (710,000), 7:30 (663,000), Budget 2013 (620,000), At the Movies (432,000) and Time Team (349,000).

TEN’s night was again under par with TEN News (695,000), NCIS (665,000), The Biggest Loser (627,000), The Project (503,000), NCIS: LA (485,000). The Simpsons was 388,000.

The Rove McManus episode of Who Do You Think You Are? was the highest this season at 583,000 for SBS ONE. Insight was 230,000, World News Australia was 179,000 and Dateline was 155,000.

Shaun the Sheep led multichannels with 337,000.

OzTAM Overnights: Tuesday 14 May 2013

66 Responses

  2. @glennc – haha, of course! Rove McManus on SBS was the reason that the launch of House Rules was very soft. The execs at Seven will be so relieved to know that it wasn’t anything to do with them deciding that another reno comp show should start half an hour later and on a Tuesday. Mr Lyons can wipe all that egg off his face now.

  3. Very disappointing launch figures for HR, Seven will be none too pleased, given the enormous amount of hype it has had over the last month. I watched it and thought it was quite good, but I think the Block has too much advance momentum on them. I think it is a better concept than The Block and the prize is way better. In fact, the prize is probably too high stakes (getting mortgage immediately paid off in full) and I imagine the bitchiness, sabotage and stress in weeks to come is going to be intense.

  4. Everybody knew The Voice was going to run way over, 17 minutes of it was in the EPG.

    House Rules is the 3rd Renovation show in the 3 months, and it is a new format which always comes with risk. The Networks just can’t keep serving up more and more stripped competition based shows and expect 2m for them.

    There are only so many hours a week people will watch TV. Some of them are going to have to fail, just like Yasmin, EDN, Excess Baggage and The Renovators did.

  5. We pvr the block and started watching it at 7.30, already have favourite team and disliked team.
    Also pvrd house rules and Rafters and watched them after the block. .Not sure on HR couldnt find anyone to like, probly give it another chance tonight.
    Also pvr the NCIS Shows
    It will be interesting to see the figures for HR after the PVR figures are added

  6. I liked the show although I did watch it on catch up tv because I was watching the Biggest Loser. Don’t yank it yet channel 7, give people a chance to find it. House Rules should have been on instead of Celebrity Splash. @Jennome, I too was concerned about the virtual demolition of the house. Lucky the couple who own it can’t see what’s happening! As for the prize I kinda thought that’s what it would be.

  8. I’ve PVRd the first three episodes of The Block, and watched two so far. Most of it was viewed in Fast Forward as I am already bored with it. There is so much padding. I’ll probably just watch the room reveal episodes I think.

    The problem for me with a lot of these reality shows are they are on too often. I much preferred back in the day when The Block was on Sundays and Tuesdays for one hour, even with the heavy product placement scenes, they still managed to capture what happened in the week without any filler. There were no mini competitions and day outings.

    The same went for My Restaurant Rules on Sunday and Thursday nights. Once or twice a week is fine, 3-5 nights a week for 60-90min shows is asking too much.

  9. I think I’d wait to see how House Rules goes next week when there isn’t Rove McManus on SBS sucking away the viewers. 583k is a fantastic result for SBS, I’m sure 7 didn’t have that in mind when launching House Rules!
    NCIS might very well be The Voice’s next victim. Big drop (850k ish – 665k). Hopefully Ten stick by their gun.

  10. I am only watching House Rules for the Perth couple. I think watching 5 more couples house being renovated may get a bit repetitive. I prefer The Block format.

  11. Looks like 10 programming to me. I hope Celebrity Splash continues to bite them in the arse after what they said about TV Tonight.
    Those in my house that watch building shows didn’t even know that House Rules was on and have already started on The Block anyway.

  12. Someone who used to be at TEN now in Programming at Seven? Hmmm.
    OMG, how many repeats – oh, sorry, have to use that incorrect word “encores” – will this disaster get. I’ll have to get a rubber stamp made to fill in all of those “TBA”s in the weekend TV guide.

  16. Ch7 have no option but to stick it out now. Not doing so would signal instability and is going to be a second free kick for ch9 in particular.

  19. I thought I’d give it a go and quite enjoyed it, even though the almost total demolition of the house was alarming. Presuming this bunch of (mostly) amateurs are being closely supervised behind the scenes, apart from the 2 visible experts. But what really annoys me is that these shows are scheduled for 1 1/4 hours (and go longer), completely buggering up any other viewing plans you might have. Rafters no longer appeals, so I had nowhere to go.

    This puts me off watching it at all, as there’s always a cliffhanger at the end, although no doubt there’ll be repeated re-iterations at the beginning of tonight’s show.

  21. Woweeeey, boy oh boy…..it will build because its not going anywhere and i watched it and it was well made. However Ch7 made a huge mistake with celebrity splash taking the momentum and killing it and then running this later (after the block had started)….bad , very bad. Seven will be really angry but only have themselves to blame.

  22. Two renovation shows on at the same time are simply too many.
    Seven should have launched HR last week or the week before. The show is almost DOA. This could be the biggest TV blunder of 2013.

  24. Channel 7 is swallowing the same bitter pill that channel 10 munched on when they launched The Renovators. Just because you have a successful format in MKR this doesn’t mean you can just use the same ideas, look and feel on a different genre. Bigger and louder is not better. Collective ch 7 hubris has cost them dearly, this will give ch 9 the next few weeks of ratings at least, while they sort the mess out. They’ve spent bugger all on other programs preferring to throw all their programming budget at tent pole series…..when will they learn?

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