The face to save Nine News

The op_inion has taken an extended hiatus but now with all that has happened in the television world, it is time to return and start throwing some punches.

Perennial favourite Mark Ferguson was removed from Nine’s news desk and replaced by ‘sneaky Pete’, Peter Overton finally ending the rumors that he had the eye on the top job since Brian Henderson’s departure earlier this decade.

Nine’s decision to replace Ferguson with Overton demonstrates that Nine’s newsroom has no backbone.

Clearly Ferguson needed time and in four years he was not given an opportunity to cement his face upon our television screens for the next forty years like predecessor Henderson was given.

Terrible news lead-ins thanks to a lack of creativity from Nine aided by redundancies and retrenchments of key on-air personnel like Brad Schmitt, Christine Spiteri and Adam Walters followed by Dale Paget and Shaun Fewings departures from the network.

The experience is thinning with only Mark Burrows, Allison Langdon and Simon Bouda remaining as senior and experienced journalists who are out there in the field filing reports.

Overton’s debut was not flattering as a clunky and mistake ridden first night has not eased any critics or helped his cause as the newsreader who usurped the likeable ‘friend next door’, Mark Ferguson.

And what are Nine going to do with Ferguson?

A weekend news-reading gig is not enough for the best man in the business and then where does Michael Usher go?

Nine has got it all wrong but if there were one face to resurrect the 6PM news disk then lure back Hugh Riminton.

Seven take 2008

As expected Channel Seven has won the 2008 ratings race as television switches to summer repeats and runs of failed programs. It was the second half of the year that took Seven to victory who finished the year with 29.5% of the audience share, followed by Nine with 26.8%. Ten finished third with 20.8%, ABC 17.4% and SBS 6.5%.

Packed to the Rafters was the year’s most popular television series which Seven launched after the Olympics and consistently captured around two million viewers every week. It will be back in 2009 and beyond judging by those figures.

Find My Family was the second most popular series followed by Underbelly. In fact all Top 10 most popular series were Australian productions which is a very good sign for our industry. Apart from Underbelly, Seven had all other nine places in the Top 10 with The Zoo, City Homicide, Border Security, The Force, Border Security (Rpt), Seven News and RSPCA: Animal Rescue rounding out the Top 10.

The figures do however not account for the fact that each production has a different number of episodes in a ‘season’.

Nevertheless this is an excellent result for Seven while Nine’s next best performing series was 60 Minutes followed by Two and a Half Men, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, Domestic Blitz and the David Attenbrough Series.

If the Olympic figures are removed from the ratings figures then the result between Seven and Nine is much closer. Seven with 28.5% and Nine with 27.3%.

Interstignly Nine also finished ahead of Seven in the key demopgraphics. In the 25-54's category it was Nine 28.7%, Seven 28.0% and in the 16-39's demographic Ten 29.7%, Nine 28.4% and Seven 26.4%.

So will it be Nine in 09?

With promised local versions of Ladette to Lady and Wipeout as well as new seasons of local dramas Underbelly and Sea Patrol as well as new drama, Rescue Squad, the network will be hoping to win the year.

Seven are returning all of their successful shows and will be boosting the Sunday night dual commissioning a new current affairs program, Sunday Night which has all ready signed former Nine reporter Ross Coulthard and rumours have former Nine personality Mike Munro in the hosting chair.

Seven will want to assure their Sunday and Thursday night which lets the network down while Nine still searches for a popular news lead-in. The 5:30PM slot has been troubled the network with suggestions the network will be looking for an afternoon version of the ‘Today Show’ having all ready filmed a pilot for an entertainment magazine show with Richard Reid and Georgie Parker as hosts.

If Nine are to go ahead with these plans they would be smart to launch the show early in the new year perhaps up against the Australian Open Tennis on Seven in attempt to capture this audience and gain an advantage over Seven.

Ugly Pretty Breakfast Show

‘Ugly’ Phil O’Neil and Sami Lukis join forces from Monday morning to present Triple M’s new breakfast show. Following on from The Shebang’s failures and The Cage, Triple M desperately need a breakfast show to reignite the station.

O’Neil had been widely tipped by the op-inion for a number of months as the likely candidate to front Triple M’s breakfast show. Sami Lukis is perhaps the odd choice as co-host as she will be returning to Sydney after a stint with Triple M Brisbane’s The Cage.

Lukis previously partnered Merrick & Rosso on NOVA 969 as the newsreader/co-host during 2006 and 2007. O’Neill is an accomplished broadcaster having worked across a range of Austero syndicated radio stations and in the UK. His persona, however might not correlate with the Triple M listener.

Which begs the question, what is a Triple M listener? What sound will Triple M be trying to create?

The Spoonman finished up last night so it appears that from Monday, Triple M will be putting a line through what has been done and start a fresh.

Where will Peter Burner be? Will Paul Murray have a gig?

And what will happen to Anthony Maroon and Rob Duckworth who are two radio veterans whose voices would correlate with the old Triple M sound. If The Spoonman has been shown the door then will Maroon and Duckworth also be heading the same way?

Jamie Angel is being heard on air during the mornings, Alexis Saviddes has been tipped to move into the morning show and the younger voices of Drew, Fridgy and Lizzie Loveit have been heard on the station over the last couple of months.

Bianca Dye is still without a confirmed gig and could front a drive time team and another radio talent, Jabba has recently left NOVA 969.

With O’Neil and Lukis on breakfast, a new Triple M maybe introduced, targeting a younger audience and perhaps a little more female skewed.

Attacking a younger audience might be an odd strategic decision because Triple M would not necessarily want to steal listners from sister station 2 DAY FM but with rock genre not as clearly defined in 2008, a new direction is needed.

This still doesn’t answer the music charter question. Will it be rock? Will Triple M persist with “the awesome 80’s”? I think nostalgia is out of the question, especially if The Spoonman has been shown the door.

Ugly Phil and Sami Lukis get a free ride, starting Monday, December 1 during the Christmas non ratings period – good luck!

Does Triple M know what they are doing?

I might sound like a broken record but then again a broken, scratchy record might sound better than what we are currently hearing on Austero’s little brother, Triple M but where are they heading?

A decision was made to abandon ship and enter time machine in an attempt to wind back the clock and once again play the ‘Awesome 80’s’. So WSFM, I mean Triple M have decided that after finishing dead last in the latest Nielsen Media Radio Ratings they would immediately sack the troubled Shebang breakfast show and follow that up with the announcement that the Wil & Lehmo drive show is going to be axed after two years.

In a press release from CEO Michael Anderson, it was stated that Triple M are “allocating resources elsewhere”. Well once again I am miffed by this decision as the name Tony Martin and Get This spring to mind.

Theory 1

Wil & Lehmo were probably offered breakfast and refused, so they were shown the
door.

Theory 2

Triple M, the awesome 80’s and nostalgia are the new vogue, so the station will be relaunched as another WSFM in 2009? Maybe Andrew Denton or Doug Mullray might return or even WSFM might try and revive the ‘Jono & Dano’ show with Jonathan Coleman and Ian Rogerson.

In 2005-2006, Triple M was all about music and chat with variety like The Cage, The Shebang, Get This and Mick Molloy’s Tough Love. Then The Spoonman came back and Paul Murray was given his own show. It was kind of like the ‘AM’ of FM with talkback, news, entertainment and music.

But the traditional Triple M listener didn’t like hearing songs by Pink in between the segments – dilemma.

At least one can say they are running last so there is only one way to go but to sack there most successful show, Wil & Lehmo is a bizarre decision. Advertisers will be worried and in the current economic environment Triple M may have had to make the hard call but they are leaving what listenership they have in the dark.

I assume they will relaunch this nostalgic theme and try and compete with WSFM and Vega. If that is the case then they will need new presenters and they are obviously creating new breakfast and drive shows but the talent that is still signed to the station, namely Paul Murray and Phil O’Neill do not really fit with a nostalgic Triple M which leaves more questions unanswered.

If they are going down the nostalgic path then hopefully Tony Martin will be retuned to the airwaves in drive or breakfast – please Triple M bring back Tony Martin!

You are assured listeners with Martin. Otherwise the nostalgic cupboard looks quite bear unless Jono Coleman is unearthed from WSFM or Wendy Harmer, Paul Holmes or Peter Moon can be enticed to Triple M.

Alternatively if Triple M decide to back Murray and O’Neill there is still Bianca Dye who is unsigned at this stage and would be a great addition to a breakfast or drive show but they will still need to find that one wow factoring audience puller.

Triple M need to make some decisions and build a new ship because there last one has sailed.

2U-Wii

Now that’s one way to sell advertising space – by changing your station’s identity.

For the next three weeks, Sydney talkback radio station 2UE are running a promotional campaign with Nintendo’s Wii subsequently dropping the ‘E’ to be replaced by ‘Wii’.

It got me thinking about who else could do this?

Channel Naan perhaps could promote a brand of the Indian bread or WSFM could be renamed OPSM if they wanted to advertise glasses.

The radio station has really embraced the campaign changing their logo on the highway at St Leonard's are 'digitalising' the 2UE presenters profile pictures. Check them out! http://www.2ue.com.au/

2UE and Nintendo’s Wii promotion is a very clever marketing strategy for Wii and highlights the creativity from 2UE’s management.

Charlie Sheen Channel

Just when too much Charlie Sheen is not enough… now Nine are giving us more.

Not only can we see the sex addict five times a week for half an hour but now Nine are screening Two and A Half Men more often than the news.

Monday’s 7-8PM (two episodes)
Tuesday’s 7-7:30 PM and 7:30-8:30PM (three episodes)
Wednesday’s 7-8:30PM (three episodes)
Thursday’s 7-7:30PM (one episode)
Friday 7-7:30PM (one episode)

That makes 10 episodes a week and only seven nightly news bulletins!

But it is working as Two and A Half Men is very competitive and occasionally beating Home and Away (Seven) and the Wednesday hour from 7:30-8:30 has been Nine’s most popular show of the week.

Strange isn’t it that this sit-com couldn’t rate for Nine in it’s first six seasons until the network took a gamble and scheduled the comedy for the 7pm slot, weeknights over summer and the show has survived ever since.

It’s genuinely funny and I for one have been converted to Charlie Sheen’s dead pan humour.

Let’s just hope Nine have learnt their lesson from ‘over-exposing’ too many products and shows. Gordon Ramsay appears to have all ready been killed off after being a star at the start of this year seeing two new instalments of Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares axed after only one episode – after the Olympics and where is the millionaire, Eddie McGuire?

Sheen and Two and A Half Men have grown from strength to strength – if only Nine could get Sheen to read the news or A Current Affair, they might be winning the ratings.

Sunday swings back to Nine

Will he or won’t he? The man on everybody’s lips, Peter Costello helped 60 Minutes and Channel Nine win Sunday night. It was a big win for Nine who relegated Seven to third place with Nine dominating the News (1.638 million), Battlefronts (1.286 million) and 60 Minutes (1.7 million) to win the night.

Jamie Durie’s The Outdoor Room was softened, with only 1.187 million viewers and Outback Wildlife Rescue had just over the million but it is Seven’s decision to move Dancing with the Stars to Sunday night’s that will have the network most concerned.

Once hosted by Daryl Summers, the show pulled on average two million viewers per week but on Sunday’s with Daniel McPherson the show last night only captured 1.167 million viewers. Still far from a failure but not competitive enough to challenge Nine’s 60 Minutes or Ten’s Australian Idol which itself had 1.224 million viewers.

Encore episodes, in other words, repeats of Thank God You’re Here are rating extremely well for Ten, last night claiming 1.136 million viewers itself, helping Ten to finish second but makes you wonder why Working Dog are not producing a series this year.

The night looked like this:
Nine: 29.8%

TEN: 22.8%

Seven: 22.5%

ABC: 19.6%

SBS: 5.3 %

OzTam

ABC’s Midsummer Murders finished in the Top 10 with 1.233 million viewers and so did Doctor Who with 1.169 million viewers.

Seven’s problem came with Private Practice which in its series return, bombed at 9:30PM only able to hold 722 000 viewers. It must be remembered that Nine had CSI: Miami in all states except Victoria who finally screened the first two episodes of Underbelly.

Despite most Victorians had allegedly all ready seen Underbelly illegally, the blockbuster series was still able to capture almost 600 000 viewers in Melbourne alone.

With Nine’s impressive start to the week, it should be a closer race this week but Seven will still win Monday and Tuesday but Wednesday could be more competitive if Fringe lives up to its expectations.