Monica Attard joins Media Watch

Walkley award winning
journalist and interviewer, Monica Attard, has agreed to front Media Watch in
2006 – as the SMH reports here. Attard has shown high level
interviewing skills, especially on her Sunday night profiles program at 9pm on
ABC local radio. Brisk,
well researched and with tenacious questioning, they were interesting and
informative.

Let’s
hope she can do irony better than Liz Jackson who decided to
return to Four Corners after hosting the show this year. The lack of light and
shade in her voice and a one pitch monotone was her main
drawback. Attard, with her extensive foreign
reporting experience, has a better voice and better command of the nuances of
using it.

Last night’s TV
ratings

The Winners Another night won by Nine but it was a
much more competitive night. Thanks to the performance of its new US series, The
Ghost Whisperer (1.326 million), Seven had a far better night and wasn’t badly
hurt by the still falling audience for headLand (714,000). Second was A
Current Affair (1.255 million), followed by Seven News (1.228 million), narrowly
from Nine News (1.201 million). Then came Today Tonight (1.122 million), the ABC 7pm News (1.085 million) and Ten’s new US show Surface (1.048 million).
The Losers

Seven’s headLand campaign is struggling. After edging lower Monday
night, it fell to 714,000. At this rate it will be under 700,000 by Thursday
night in a week when the storyline and production values are supposed to be on
the improve.
News & CA On Monday night, Seven News and TT were strong, especially in
Sydney but last night saw a bit of a swap. Seven News still won narrowly nationally because
of Perth but also because of a 80,000 viewer thumping in Sydney,
324,000 to 244,000. Now that is very bad news for Nine. ACA had a big win over TT everywhere except Perth (beating
TT by well over a 100,000 viewers in Melbourne).
The Stats Illustrating the closeness of the night, Nine won but with a share of 26.6%, to Seven with 25.7%, Ten with 22.4%, the ABC
with 17.4% and SBS with 7.4%. Nine won Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne, Seven
won Brisbane and Perth
Glenn Dyer’s
comments		 headLand is the worry for
Seven and it may be tempted to pull it, but it can’t, it’s committed. Seven
may also be tempted to rest Ghost Whisperer at Christmas and bring it back in
ratings. It has been embedded in viewer memories, as has Surface on Ten. Showing
just how short of product it is in 2006, Nine isn’t floating any new programs
into its summer schedule to see if they take with
viewers.