Glenn Dyer’s shorts and TV ratings

Is Eddie headed for the top job at Nine?

Viewers
of last night’s edition of Who Wants To Be A
Millionaire? noticed the contestant, Martin Flood, coughing and answering
questions in a rather odd fashion. So much
so that suspicions were raised and the Nine Network reviewed the tape of the
program, as this story from the Daily Telegraph reports.

Flood reached $250,000 and is going to go on next week to become
Eddie’s second millionaire in a month, after a drought of more than five
years. That
might be enough to farewell Eddie from the host’s chair, if chat around the TV
industry is correct. The
gossip is that Eddie is moving up into management at
the Nine Network, leaving Millionaire and the AFL Footy Show
behind. How far
would Eddie go? Well some claim as far as the big office on the third floor at
Willoughby,
next to CEO Sam Chisholm. Just
what Eddie would do there is open to conjecture but some claim he would fill
the CEO role that Sam Chisholm has occupied on a temporary basis since taking
over in early May. Eddie
has denied this speculation.

Australian Idol struggles on
Australian Idol isn’t doing well and for weeks now the
TV industry has been guessing when the final would be held. Well,
it will be on Monday 21 November at the Sydney Opera House. The finale will run
for two hours from 7.30pm, which means they have scaled back dramatically from the near three hours of
last year’s finale.

Sunday night’s performance episode was watched by just over 1.4
million people – that’s 39% down on a year ago when the audience was a
smidge under 2 million viewers. And last night’s verdict episode was
watched by 1.141 million – another night of underperformance compared
to last year – but still a night of “adequate” performance so far as
Ten is concerned because it’s still doing well enough to give the
Network a handy win in the 16 to 39 age group. Ten has already won that
group, its target, for this year. The
trend this year has been for the verdict episode to attract a
sharply smaller audience than the performance program on the Sunday
night. That
means Idol isn’t engaging viewers like it
did a year or two ago.

Last night’s TV
ratings