Glenn Dyer’s shorts and TV ratings

More to go at Nine

There
are reports from the Nine Network of another budget cut being ordered by
management as the toll from the recent job cutting rises past
100.

Program
heads and executive producers were told earlier this week by Ian Audsley, the chief operating officer, that another 10%
budget cut had been decided. Around
50 to 60 people were lined up and despatched in the
last week of June and more have been going in small quantities over the
intervening five weeks.

Some
contractors to Nine report that delayed payments are
continuing. Revenue
growth is believed to be weak and the cost of restructuring continues to
rise. Programs that are over budget had been told to trim their budgets
until they’ve recovered their financial position. But this latest cut is believed
to have been ordered to trim budgets even further.

Tough times for The Alice?
Nine’s
character-based drama, The Alice, will live to fight another week or two after a
slight uptick in its audience on Monday night: 1.041
million people watched on average, compared with 990,100 a week ago on Monday
night. But it’s obviously still a big turn-off with many viewers.

The peak audience on Monday night of 1.152 million in the
first quarter hour is still well under the first up peak of 1.3 million, and
below the 1.168 million a week ago Monday night.

Nine will be worried that around
310,000 Temptation viewers were lost when that program finished and The Alice took over at 7:30pm. And the turn-off continued through The Alice, with a total of 450,000 Temptation viewers switching channels.

The
Network knows that sort of drop in audience numbers will make it very hard to sell
The Alice to advertisers and to get them to pay the sort of money to cover
costs, let alone make a profit.

Last night’s TV ratings