The next step in Ten’s grand news plan:

The Ten network has appointed its corporate affairs boss, Jim Carroll, in the new role as its new head of news.

A former highly-regarded producer from Nine and Seven and a former print journo with the defunct Daily Mirror, Carroll will control all the state-based news services, Sports Tonight and Meet The Press. He moved from Nine in 2000, where he was Executive Producer of Nightline, to the management role of head of news and assistant company secretary.

This
is a key step in Ten’s plan to gradually expand in the news and current
affairs area. After the mixed reaction to its exclusive interview with
Iraq hostage Douglas Wood, it was apparently felt that the Network
needed a more hands-on executive with overall responsibility and
experience to develop similar deals and programs in the future.

Carroll
joins his old boss from Nine, Peter Meakin, in this exalted level.
Meakin is head of News and Public Affairs at Seven while the ABC has
John Cameron as head of its News and Current Affairs division. The Nine
Network is now the only TV network without a news and public affairs
supremo.

Vulture is vile:

Week
two of Vulture, the ABC’s arts program on Tuesday nights, and I couldn’t stay up
to watch: bed was a better option. And
that must have been the view of a few viewers because it lost audience from its
first outing a week earlier.

Just
over 228,600 watched the program Tuesday night, compared to 271,800 people over
the half hour of terror a week earlier. Its
audience was half the 577,000 or so who watched Foreign Correspondent, while it
again did no favours for Lateline, whose audience dipped to 224,000 from 236,000 a
week earlier.

Last night’s TV ratings:

The Winners

Seven:Tuesday and how many ways can you say it: Dancing with
the Stars again captured the night with its audience rising back above the two
million mark (2.061 million). Seven’s Home and Away had another big night
running second with 1.655 million, followed by Today Tonight (1.505 million)
with Nine’s A Current Affair well back on 1.398 million. All Saints on Seven
beat the end of the CSI repeat and CSI New York to complete a domination of the
Network on the night, except in Brisbane.
The Losers

The ABC’s Tuesday night episode
of The Bill is looking a bit slippery and soapy as the audience nudges downwards:
857,000 average last night. Nine is starting to resemble Ten on Tuesday nights as it desperately milks Frasier
for all it’s worth. There’s much repeated episodes at 5 pm, then a new
episode at 7.30pm (1.208 million) and then a second repeat at 8pm.
Ten last night used a repeat of The Simpsons at 6 pm and more repeats from 7.30 to 8.30pm. A real battle to the
death of repeats at 7.30pm! Nine won. Both were swamped by Dancing With The
Stars. A new series of
The Apprentice returned with a whimper from Nine publicity and viewers: only
434,000 viewers.
News & CA Seven News lost nationally to Nine, but won Sydney and Perth.
Today Tonight beat A Current Affair nationally and in Sydney, Adelaide and
Perth. ABC 7 pm news was the national broadcaster’s top program with 1.056
million viewers, but the 7.30 Report fell sharply and averaged only 745,000. Are
viewers of the ABC that engaged with ballroom dancing? I know the ABC has its
own show, but the audience for that is half or less that of the Seven
epic.
The Stats Seven, 35.0%, then Nine on 27.6%, Ten on 20.7%, the ABC
down on 12.5% and SBS with SBS 4.1%. Seven won Sydney and Melbourne, Adelaide
and Perth, but Nine won Brisbane where Dancing doesn’t do as well and the CSI
programs rate very well, even in repeats.
Glenn Dyer’s
comments		 As expected, Dancing With the Stars did the business for Seven
in a convincing win. That Nine has been reduced to emulating Ten and using
multiple repeats of a popular sitcom in Frasier, shows how short of programmable
material the network is. It wants to hang on and limp towards a big ending later
this year for the final episodes of Frasier. It was using up new episodes back
to back on Tuesday nights. Tonight it’s the one day cricket: a rare prime time
outing in Australia and a chance to see how the game rates as prime time
entertainment. If it works, expect a restructured cricket season with one day
international games in October or November. Nine has a bigger bill to pay to
Cricket Australia for its exclusive deal and the only way to pay for it is to
push more games into prime time during the ratings season and not low rating
summer. Seven showed during its telecasting of the Australian ODIs from England
that there’s a good audience for the right
game.