Glenn Dyer’s shorts and TV ratings

Forensic doesn’t catch on fire

The
Seven series Forensic Investigators had a brilliant first series towards the
end of 2004. The six
shows did better than expected and with Nine’s Without
a Trace
out of the opposition schedule towards the end of its brief season, the
program finished with an average audience of 1.26 million. But this
year, there’s no such luck for Forensic: it hasn’t cracked a
million viewers in the first three episodes – peaking at 956,000 in the second
week before falling to 897,000 for the third episode.

It’s not
terminal but far from what Seven and producers Southern Star would have been
hoping for.
Looking at the series so far, it seems to be a bit slower than the
first, or is it that there’s just been too many forensic style programs
aired over the past year? It’s a
danger that the “natural talk” programs should watch, too – Australian Story and its group of
clones: True Stories on Seven and the pilot made by Andrew Denton’s group for Nine. Viewers
get too used to the idea and start either tuning out, or watching less
frequently.

TV programming for viewers with short term memory loss

The Ten
Network surprised a lot of viewers by sneaking a repeat of the first episode of
Numb3rs into the Wednesday night schedule after 9.30pm. The
reprise, as it’s called in TV talk, was watched by 811,000 people,
about 300,000 less than the first time it was aired in the wake of the Big Brother
final on Monday night.

The practice has become a common occurrence in 2005. Nine “reprised” the ill-fated Starstruck, while Seven had encore screenings of the first episodes of Desperate Housewives and Lost (as well as Last Man Standing and Boston Legal, without
much impact). Even the ABC has been
known to repeat a program or two in a week.

Last night’s TV
ratings