Along with their usual passion for cricket, Australian viewers are showing an alarming preoccupation with sex, drugs and anatomy. At the end of Week One of the silly season, in which the TV networks try out programs they don't have the nerve to show during the ratings year, Channel Nine finds itself with a hit show it doesn't really want. Last week it played the first episode of Weeds twice.
Weeds is a new American sitcom about a desperate housewife who sells marihuana to her neighbours. The Tuesday showing got 803,000 viewers in the mainland capitals, and the Thursday showing got 630,000, suggesting either that Weeds had great word of mouth or that many of the original viewers came back to make sure they'd heard a woman using the C word in prime time. The audience for tomorrow night's episode will reveal whether Weeds is the Friends of 2007.
Channel Seven may have been similarly embarrassed when 1.1 million viewers watched its Monday night thriller Vanished. This show has been cancelled in the US after 14 episodes, so to prevent Australians forming an attachment which can never be requited, Seven has moved Vanished from an 8.
30 timeslot to 9.30. The return of Smallville and Charmed on Ten managed less than 800,000, as did Nip/Tuck on Nine.
No risk of them lasting past January. Nine won the first week of the silly season with 38.0 per cent of the prime time audience, while Seven got 27.
3, Ten got 19.9, ABC got 18.7 and SBS got 6.
3. THIS may be a first: The little Aussie flick Kenny is released this week on DVD while still showing in cinemas. The producers don't care that selling the DVD will cut the potential cinema audience.
They know how comprehensively the silver disc has colonised Australian culture, so if he can hit the shops for the Christmas frenzy, Kenny on disc could more than double the $7.5 million he has already taken at the box office. Since 1998, Australians have bought 10.
9 million DVD players, according to the research organisation GfK Marketing. Allowing for duplication and replacement, this means there's a DVD player in 89 per cent of households. Meanwhile, after 10 years, pay TV has reached only 25 per cent of households.
The subscription bosses can blame our disc obsession for putting Australia so far behind the pay penetration in America (88 per cent of homes), Britain (50 per cent) and New Zealand (40 per cent). Australians don't see the point of paying for more television when we barely have time to watch all the movies and TV shows we've bought on DVD. So how do we use this all-conquering technology?
GfK Marketing kindly provided a list of the 50 top-selling DVDs of 2006. They fall into five categories ..
. Babysitters: Cars, Over the Hedge, High School Musical, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Madagascar, Polar Express. Blockbusters: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Chronicles of Narnia, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Batman Begins, Mr and Mrs Smith, King Kong.
Classics: Dirty Dancing, The Notebook, Wizard of Oz, Dances with Wolves, Toy Story. Cult flicks you had trouble finding at the cinema: Napoleon Dynamite, Underworld: Evolution, Serenity, Crash, Reservoir Dogs. Cult TV shows you had trouble finding on the networks: Family Guy Season 4, Scrubs Seasons 1, 2 and 3, Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story.
There is one mysterious absence from the list of 50 top-selling DVDs of the year. A month ago Paul Hogan released a 20th-anniversary "special edition'' of his classics Crocodile Dundee and Crocodile Dundee II. Since the first movie is a national icon, which made $48 million in 1986 and contributed the phrase "that's a knife'' to the language, you'd assume it might sell a few copies.
Here's a theory on why it failed to join Dirty Dancing, Reservoir Dogs and Cars in our home entertainment diet: apart from a trailer, it has no extras. For all his financial expertise, Hogan does not understand the concept of "value-added''. Apparently, he could not be bothered providing a thoughtful documentary or voice-over.
Some people are still stuck in the age of the VCR. WHAT if they held a TV ratings year and everybody won -- and simultaneously, everybody lost? That was the story with Australia's commercial networks yesterday, each celebrating a win, but each reflecting on a disappointing year.
Technically, Channel Nine is Still The One, averaging the biggest audience in prime time (6pm to midnight). But it was the worst result in Nine's 50 years. Its average prime time audience of 1.
072 million in the mainland capitals was down 1.5 per cent on last year, and that included a big boost from the Commonwealth Games. Nine's advertisers will exclude the Games audience from their calculations and come up with an actual drop of four per cent in Nine's prime time viewing this year, which follows a similar drop the previous year.
Channel Seven enjoyed an audience jump of 2 per cent this year, averaging 1.
028 million viewers in prime time. But Seven could have been the winner if it hadn't dropped the ball in the second half, which included an alarming decline for its flagship, Dancing With The Stars. Seven's Director of Programming, Tim Worner, was trying to sound like a winner yesterday: "This year was all about building on our audience gains of the past 18 months and taking Seven to a higher level.
We are the one Australians watch for news, public affairs, breakfast television and the highest-rating Australian and international programs in primetime." Channel Ten is up 1.5 per cent in prime time, to an average of 825,000, and had the best result of any network with viewers aged 18-49.
But it suffered a series of programming disasters, having to axe its reality show Yasmin's Getting Married after one week, and failing with Tripping Over an expensive Australian drama aimed at the under 40 audience, which ended last week with just 683,000 viewers. Ten's chief programming officer, David Mott, was positioning his network as the risk-taker, where occasional disappointments were inevitable "We'll continue to develop and secure content that engages and grows our audience'' he said yesterday. "Safe programing has no home on Ten!
'' 
It's been nominated as the new word of the year, but Eddie McGuire refuses to take credit for it.
The verb "to bone'', as a synonym for sack, remove, dismiss or drive out, emerged in an allegation that McGuire threatened to do this to Jessica Rowe, co-host of Today. When Stay in Touch was chatting to McGuire yesterday about Nine's apparent victory in the TV ratings year, we had to ask. Suddenly steel entered his usually affable tone: "I never used it.
I didn't even know that vernacular''. Even when we pointed out that the usage could be attributed to him in future Australian dictionaries, he was uninterested. "I'm happy to take credit for 'lock it in' and 'big week in football', but that's not one of mine.
It's like when John Elliott was accused of saying "pig's arse', and he never did.'' McGuire's good cheer returned when we asked if Nine would have performed better in the ratings if he'd stayed as host of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. "Of course,'' he said.
"I have an on-air ego. I know the world is missing me.'' But seriously, Nine has moved on from Millionaire and for next year is more interested in a game show format called 1 vs 100, in which the contestant competes with the audience in multiple choice questions.
Programs like that, McGuire hopes, will counter Seven's strength next year in new American dramas. Finally Channel Nine has joined the other networks in revealing its programming plans for next year. Below we detail the plans of Ten, Seven and the ABC, but first, here are the novelties promoted in Nine's statement: 1.
The Lost Tribes. A "one hour series that follows three suburban families who are sent to live for a month as members of the last primitive tribes on earth" with "gloriously beautiful footage covering African, Asian and South American tribal villages". 2.
Jetstar. An hour long series which "goes behind the scenes of Australia's newest international carrier as they deal with every type of Australian under the stressful conditons of airline travel." 3.
Code Blue. A "dynamic observational factual series ..
. from the producer of the award-winning RPA." No further details.
4. The Dame Edna Experience. One hour program in which "'Australia's mega-star will interview celebrities from both here and around the world".
5. Tsunami. "This compelling and powerful miniseries, starring Toni Collette, on the Boxing Day tsunami and its latent events, is a tale of personal loss.
" Latent events? 6. Monarchy.
"A valuable insight into the work of the Queen and her royal family in modern society." 7. Primeval.
A six part family drama in which "a zoologist specialising in the investigation of unexplained gaps in the evolutionary record discovers that prehistoric creatures are coming through to the present". Plus a crime drama called Sea Patrol, starring Lisa McCune, game shows 1 vs 100 and Show Me The Money and a British factual show called The Truth About Food. Updated 10 am, Monday December 4 A rumour went round the industry last week that the Fox 8 program An Aussie Goes Barmy had attracted 300,000 viewers -- which would have been an astonishing performance for any show on pay TV.
It must have been calculated with a special measurement system known only to Foxtel, because the OzTAM audience chart for the whole week, released this morning and published below, shows a rather different result. Meanwhile, back on mass market television, Seven or Ten would have expected to win the final week of the ratings year, because each had grand finals of its hottest shows, but thanks to cricket and crime, Channel Nine averaged 32.5 per cent of the prime time audience, while Seven got 27.
4, Ten got 20.4, ABC got 14.8 and SBS got 4.
9 per cent. For the full results of the year, go to www.smh.
com.au/tribalmind. List prepared by David Dale for The Sydney Morning Herald, based on figures from the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia and last updated September 18, 2006 .
.. 3.
The Return of the King (2003) $49m 5. Fellowship of the Ring (2001) $47m Here's a quick quiz. Can you identify the source of these lines: 1.
"With a little understanding , you can find the perfect blend." 2. "Come anytime, come anytime.
" 3. "It will take some time to find your heart and come back home." 4.
"A friend ever true." 5. "No matter where you are, you're my guiding star.
" They are, of course, lines from great Australian TV themes (Neighbours, Thank God You're Here, McLeod's Daughters, Skippy and Home and Away). It seems that Australia is the last bastion of the TV theme song. Elsewhere in the world, they're a dying art.
According to US TV historian Tim Brooks, classic themes which summed up what the show was about, such as The Beverly Hillbillies ("The next thing you know, old Jed's a millionaire"), Gilligan's Island ("Five passengers set sail that day for a three hour tour"), The Brady Bunch ("Till this one day when the lady met this fellow, and they knew that it was much more than a hunch"), Cheers("You wanna go where everybody knows your name"), and Friends ("I'll be there for you, when the rain starts to fall"), would these days fall victim to budget restrictions and short attention spans. Grey's Anatomy, for example, has cancelled the 26-second theme that introduced its first season. They're in the home stretch now.
The TV networks have only six more weeks before they do the massive mathematical exercise that proves which of them "won the year". Millions of dollars in advertising depend on this, along with the takeover price that might be paid for a network by prowling predators. Nine has already claimed victory, based on having more viewers than Channel Seven in more weeks (including the Commonwealth Games fortnight).
But the usual currency of the industry is prime time audience share averaged over all 48 "official" ratings weeks. By this measure, Seven has an outside chance of tieing with Nine -- which is why it should not conclude Grey's Anatomy at its season finale next week but instead continue with episodes from the new US season. Certainly Nine will end the year with a smaller average audience figure than last year, while Seven and Ten will be up.
Nine has an average share for the year so far of 29.2 per cent if you include the Commonwealth Games period, or 28.5 per cent if you don't include the Games.
Last year it averaged 29.3 per cent. These are the equivalent figures for the other networks .
.. Seven: 27.
8 with Games, 28.0 without Games, 27.1 last year.
Ten: 22.4, 22.7, 21.
8. ABC: 15.1, 15.
2, 15.7. SBS: 5.
4, 5.5, 6.1.
Click to learn the most watched shows of the year and of all time. For Saturday's results, read on ..
. This blog is now a heritage item -- worth studying but no longer current. For the latest discussion on TV trends, click Channel Nine's attempt to squeeze the last drops of ratings from rugby league did not work on Saturday.
The Australia-New Zealand match drew strong audiences in Sydney and Brisbane, but Melbourne showed no evidence of having been turned on to new delights by its freak participation in this year's NRL grand final. Seven won the week, with a prime time audience share of 28.5 per cent, while Nine got 26.
4, Ten got 23.1, ABC got 16.3, and SBS got 5.
7. These were Saturday's top programs ..
. This blog is now a heritage item -- worth studying but not current. Click for the latest discussion about TV trends.
Updated 10 am, Sunday October 8 Despite a battle of wits and death rays between Daleks and Cybermen, the final episode of Dr Who for the year couldn't crack the million achieved by its opening episode, but it came close -- 957,000, which will be enough to ensure the ABC does right by the next season, sadly without Billie Piper. Nine won both Friday and Saturday nights, and the prime time audience shares for the week ended up thus: Nine 29.6 per cent, Seven 27.
0, Ten 21.8, ABC 16.0 and SBS 5.
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