The 2009 Top Ten

2009 has been an interesting time for television. The year saw a fundamental shift in the way that viewers approached television. Viewers have engaged in a digital television revolution, which radically shifted the way they interacted with their platform of choice. Viewers also took on a renewed sense of ownership over what they were watching on the tube.

So, what the heck stood out about 2009 TV-wise? Lets take a look at the Top Ten Most Interesting Things About TV in 2009.

10. Freeview continues to confuse the message
It was decided that its in Australias best interests to follow the UK and adopt the Freeview branding strategy. The idea was always destined to fail. Australian networks were never going to play nicely with one another and Australian networks had already established well recognised branding for their channels. People are used to understanding what each channel stands for in Australia. Further channel brands were simply going to extend the consumers understanding of their interactions with TV channel brands.

Instead Freeview have confused the matter by trying to establish an additional brand that is supposed to represent these other brands, while engaging in an advertising campaign that was, well, confusing. The Freeview consortium have put labels on ‘Freeview’ compliant equipment, while blocking other companies from using the Freeview brand (despite the fact their equipment will work just as well). The brand is confused and purchasing a Freeview product is confusing.

Ask a TV viewer what Go! is. Ask them about One HD, or 7Two, or ABC3. You can likely even ask them about ABC2 and SBS2 and you’ll be given a fairly clear answer as to what each of the services are. Ask them about Freeview and wait for a fairly vague answer.

The most important message that Freeview can give the Australian consumer is that it can be accessed economically with the purchase of some very cheap digital STB’s. An entry-level machine can cost no more than $30-40. Another message is that it can turn a poor snowy TV signal into a clear, beautiful image. It’s astounding just how many people subscribe to Foxtel with a primary reason being to improve TV reception. And yet, Freeview has ignored all of this.

In 2009 the only thing Freeview was really successful in doing was to get Dan Illics parody pulled from YouTube.

9. Nine Screws with Curb Your Enthusiasm
It’s been discussed on this blog a couple of times, but the incident is one that was so incredibly foolish that its certainly one of the biggest programming blunders of the year.

Ten years after its conclusion, Seinfeld remains very popular. The DVD’s sell remarkably well and repeats have performed very well on the Go! channel. With Channel 9/Go! retaining broadcast rights for Curb Your Enthusiasm, it would seem that the ratings potential for the Seinfeld Reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm would deliver some quite healthy ratings. Yet, Nine ballsed it completely.

The Seinfeld reunion served as the spine of season seven of Curb Your Enthusiasm. It served as a slow build, with the final episodes showcasing the filming of the ‘reunion special’. Instead of doing the logical thing and waiting to see how Curb Your Enthusiasm would play out and schedule it appropriately on Go!, Channel 9 decided to go early and re-badge an episode of CYE as the Seinfeld Reunion. The episode chosen was quite early on and featured the shows protagonist, Larry David, simply getting in contact with the Seinfeld cast to appear in a reunion special. Most viewers, undoubtedly, will be unfamiliar with CYE. And lets be honest, its not a show with mainstream appeal. Audiences were disappointed in what they saw and the ratings for it were awful.

If they had waited until they could air it all on Go!, they easily could have built it up as an actual event, been truthful with the audience about what they were broadcasting, garnered some decent ratings for their digital channel, and perhaps build an audience for CYE. Instead, they lied to the audience, received no reward, and now have a weakened product that can’t be marketed effectively.

It’s 2009. Audiences are more informed about what they’re watching and they have more options for alternative viewing. Networks can no longer perform parlour tricks and expect audiences to react favourably.

8. The cancellation of 9am with David and Kim
Morning television makes buckets of money. Ratings are never particularly high, but audiences are loyal and sizeable enough. Where the real value to networks lie is with the advertorials that bring in millions to the networks each year.

9am with David and Kim started in 2006 as the underdog and never shook the tag. Its ratings were exceptionally low when it launched against the powerhouse that was Mornings with Kerri-Anne. It was struggling then and suffered horribly when Channel 7 launched The Morning Show in the same timeslot in 2007.

After four years of low ratings, a mercy kill was finally issued by Channel 10. While the show was certainly far meatier than its competition, it simply never quite gelled with viewers as a viable viewing choice. It will be interesting to see whether Channel 10 will continue to try and get a piece of the lucrative advertorial market in the mornings, or whether they’ll counter-program completely.

Regardless, the cancellation of 9am With David and Kim remains one of the most note-worthy stories of 2009. If only because it was so late in coming.

7. The Wire

The series started in 2002 and the final season finished airing in 2008. In 2009, however, the show seems to have hit critical mass with viewers. 2009 brought with it, in Australia at least, the show being broadcast on two digital TV channels (ABC2 and Go!), along with it higher saturation of discussion about it online and in traditional media. Anecdotally, it does seem to be appearing in more and more DVD collections of friends. Some shows take a while to find an audience and it took until 2009 for The Wire.

For a show that has made it on countless ‘Best of the decade’ lists in recent weeks, the fact it only just found a wider audience recently is certainly worthy of note.

6. THISafternoon

Channel 9 had the right idea.

Afternoons have become increasingly important to broadcast networks. Viewing habits are established with viewers in the afternoon who then stick with the same channel through the news and current affairs shows. Some viewers then start leaking to other options, but there are many who are retained throughout the evening. Channel Seven had developed a strong 6pm News followed by a dominant Today Tonight off the back of their success with Deal or No Deal.

Channel 9 opted to combat this by launching an hour-long lifestyle/news service at 4:30pm, followed by a revamped Who Wants To Be A Millionaire show titled ‘Millionaire Hotseat’. Hosted by Andrew Daddo, Katrina Blowers, and Mark Ferguson, THISafternoon survived just three weeks in the timeslot before being shafted. A combination of low ratings and a lack of network support for the project seems to have killed it.

THISafternoon was terrible television. Transplanting breakfast TV into later timeslots simply doesn’t work. Audiences require more meaty viewing and a transplanted Today on Saturday program simply didn’t cut it. At its core, the idea for a live lifestyle/variety show in the timeslot wasn’t a bad one. It was just poorly executed. THISafternoon didn’t deserve to be cancelled so quickly. It simply needed to be retooled. Or at least de-tooled with the removal of Daddo.

5. The Jay Leno Show tanks in the US
NBC had a serious problem. Conan O’Brien had been with their network for 16 years and had developed a strong audience following, industry goodwill, critical favour, and very solid brand recognition. The Tonight Show with Jay Leno had started to take the occasional hit from The Late Show with David Letterman, but was still very strong in itself. NBC didn’t want to find itself in the position it had when Letterman defected to CBS, so they opted to put a succession plan in place. In 2004, it was announced that Conan would move on to host the Tonight Show, replacing Jay Leno. The idea was to create a smooth transition from one host to another with NBC retaining its dominance in Late Night programming.

The TV industry in 2004 was substantially different to that of 2009. NBC had been insistent that Leno wouldn’t be saying goodbye to NBC for good and so in Dec 2008 ‘The Jay Leno Show’ was announced. The Jay Leno Show was placed in a prime-time slot at 10pm, thereby removing a timeslot previously owned by one hour drama shows. This meant that there would be five less drama shows on the air each week in the US and would place Leno against established drama shows like Law & Order.

It’s difficult in Australia to understand that this is a big cultural shift in the way TV is programmed in the US, but to illustrate what a fundamental change it was, consider this: the last time a US TV network aired a show stripped Mon-Fri in the same timeslot was Captain Video and His Video Rangers which aired from 1949 to 1955.

Leno was never expected to rate as well as first-run drama series, however the combination of solid ratings, sponsor-driven segments, and the relative inexpensiveness of the show was deemed to make the show a profitable cash cow for NBC. Problematically, the show has rated very poorly. On some nights Leno has been beaten by drama shows airing on cable television. The poor ratings have also flowed on to seriously damage the shows that follow. The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon have both been hurt badly. Local affiliate stations are also angry by the move as it has hurt the ratings of their local news broadcasts at 11pm.

The one hope for the show is that when the Winter Olympics air in February, the combination of a solid Olympics ratings lead-in and repeats on other channels will provide an increased audience for Leno and change the viewing habits of the audience.

4. ABC takes over the Internet with iView
iView may be well over a year old at this point, but 2009 was a year in which ABC continued the innovation of the service. There were two significant developments in the service this year.

The first was the continued roll-out of deals signed with ISP’s to provide access to the iView service for their customers that were not counted towards viewers download quotas. With viewers no longer concerned about using too much of their monthly data allowance on the service, viewership increased dramatically.

The second development was the ABC’s partnership with Sony to provide gateway access to the iView service through the PS3. Viewers now, with their PS3′s already connected online and to their television, can watch iView content online through their PS3. Its a major step towards the convergence of online and the television.

With 89,000 people accessing the iView service through the PS3 during the last week of TV ratings (and just two weeks after the initial launch) and a reported 610,000 visits monthly, the iView service has certainly developed strength as a broadcast alternative.

3. The 7PM Project
The longer that this show stays on the air, the more difficult it has been to justify its existence. When the show started in August 2009, the show was clunky and poorly formatted. Over the next 4-8 weeks, the format was toyed with and segments were given room to breathe with the compares able to exhibit more personality beyond the text on a teleprompter. The 7PM Project certainly improved, however as we are set to begin a new TV season at the end of the month, the question as to its value needs to be asked.

In 2006, Channel 10 stripped Yasmins Getting Married in the Monday to Friday 7pm timeslot. The show was a reality format and followed a young woman named Yasmin through dating misadventures as she sought to find the man of her dreams. It debuted on a Tuesday night to an audience of 778,000 nationally, but by the Friday it lost 268,000 viewers, leaving it with an audience of 510,000. Channel 10 cancelled it after just four episodes had gone to air.

For a comparison, the final week of the 2009 ratings year, on the Tuesday The 7PM Project scored 662,000 viewers nationally, with that figure dipping to 476,000.

Obviously, the TV landscape in 2009 is different to that of 2006. The market had fragmented, with more viewers distracted by online offerings, DVD’s, video games, and the new digital multi-channels, the number of potential eyeballs has diminished dramatically. That said, it is interesting that Channel 10 have put so much faith in a show that 4-5 months later is delivering such low numbers on a regular basis. TV networks need to give their new shows time to find an audience and Channel 10, to their credit, have certainly done that with The 7PM Project. But the time has come for them to decide whether they need to go in a new direction, or whether they are content with having such diminished expectations on one of their flagship programs.

The 7PM Project is symbolic of where television is at in 2009. Conceptually, it is the future of broadcast television in that its live to air, has the potential to be produced quite inexpensively, and provides excellent cross-promotional marketing opportunities. Yet, its failure to find a regular sizeable audience and Channel 10′s continued support speaks volumes about where the industry is currently at.

2. Viewers Have A Say
Over the last couple of years the television industry have increasingly sought to give a voice to the viewer. SMS/online polls, viewer feedback segments, tweets, scrolling SMS bars on teen music shows, etc have played a strong part in television throughout the decade. In 2009, however, viewers have taken this acces for granted in making themselves heard over something they deemed inacceptable on television. While it hasn’t ridded us yet of Charlie Sheens grinning mug on Two & A Half Men, it has enabled viewers to complain online and via traditional media forms (ie talkback radio).

The public outcry over Kyle Sandilands, the Chasers Make-A-Wish sketch, masturbation on Packed To The Rafters, lesbians on Home & Away, and the Hey Hey It’s Saturday Jackson Jive segment have dominated the media this year with anger from viewers perpetuating the news story. There have always been vocal viewers on talkback radio, but without the backing of a concerned lobby group, it was rare that the stories got any traction. Viewers now believe en masse that they have a voice and they want it heard.

1. Digital television makes its presence felt.
In 2008, broadcast television stations dabbled with break away programing via their HD multi-channels. In 2009 they were now able, under their license provisioning, to provide dedicated multi-channel services.

One HD launched in March, Go! in August, 7Two in November, and ABC3 in Dec. With digital TV penetration in Australia at a paltry 53% after 8 years of broadcast, the commencement of the new digital channels has been fantastic in raising digital awareness and consumption. It will be interesting to see just how radically digital penetration has risen since the debut of Go!

The commencement of Go! and 7Two has made a dent in the viewership of each of the networks primary channels, with Channel 10 hit hardest by the new channels. With a sharp increase in the amount of youth-orientated programming provided by the new channels, Go! particularly, Channel 10 has taken a ratings battering this year.

With the commercial networks in a position to launch a second multi-channel each in 2010, it will be interesting to see what Channel 10 do next. Will they launch a general entertainment multi-channel to further split the marketplace, or will they instead provide a channel with a clear and dedicated focus?

Digital multi-channeling in 2009 has been the biggest revolution in the industry since the switch to colour. We will watch the maturation of the platform over the next few years, however it can be said with great confidence that 2009 will go down in history as the year that television changed.