Glenn Dyer’s shorts and TV ratings

Castle makes Nine the king – just

The
Nine Network snatched a close win in last week’s ratings thanks to the great
Australian movie, The Castle. Nine
won the week with a share of 29.4% to 29.0% for Seven,
which was boosted by Tuesday night’s final of Dancing With The Stars – the week’s most popular program. Ten finished
with 20.3%, the ABC with 15.8% and SBS with 5.6%. For
Saturday night, Nine won with a share of 33.1% to seven
on 28.5%. The ABC was third with 16.7%, ahead of a weak Ten with 15.2% and SBS
on 6.6%. Seven
had won Friday 30.8% to 26.7% for Nine, 20.0% for Ten,
18.4% for the ABC and 4.1% for SBS.

Over
the week, Nine won everywhere bar Perth, and Sydney where Seven snuck home narrowly,
29.0% to 28.6%, thanks partly to the Tuesday night, but also to the continuing
strength of the News, Today Tonight and Home and Away. Nine’s
strength at 6 to 7pm in Melbourne and especially Brisbane, gave it a platform
with which to fight off Seven. The
Castle proved the difference on Saturday night: it attracted an average of 1.255
million viewers to become the most watched program nationally, with
the biggest audiences in Sydney and Melbourne and top five finishes in Brisbane, Adelaide and
Perth.

The ABC’s stuff up of the year
What do
you think would happen if you had a car race and no cars turned up?
You’d
think it odd. Well
what happens when you publish a book about a car race and the
scheduled TV
program doesn’t make it to air in time for any tie-in and publicity push to
happen? Well,
you would have the Peking to Paris Car Race, the ABC’s stuff up of the year
in 2005. One of
the book’s co-authors is Warren Brown, the cartoonist with News’s Daily Telegraph
in Sydney. Here’s
the publisher’s blurb on the tie-in book from Harper Collins from the News Corp
Empire. The book is called The Great Peking to Paris Expedition. Here’s
a quote from the Harper’s webpage on the book:

The
Great Peking to Paris Expedition will
ignite the imaginations of veteran car enthusiasts, travel buffs and armchair
travellers alike. The book ties in with
ABC TV’s documentary, to be screened in October.

Well not any more. It won’t be screened
until early 2006. It is being re-cut and re-written, having
blown out from three to four one hour programs. Another writer called Richard Mortlock, a former 60 Minutes producer and film writer, has
been brought in to do the re-write. It is not one of the ABC’s finest bits of
TV production.

Last night’s TV
ratings