One False Move And You're Dead

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday March 13, 2006

Michael Idato

And so, the venerable Blue Heelers returns to our screens for its final bow. Not in its usual Wednesday night timeslot but on the Saturday evening sidelines. In years gone by, television programmers could shovel their schedule every which way and viewers would follow like sheep. In the age of convergence, however, the old realities no longer seem to apply.

As far as Blue Heelers is concerned, the point is moot - the axe has swung and there is no 11th-hour pardon to be begged. But whether its Wednesday audience of 1.1 million viewers will follow it to Saturday for the final 11 weeks is an issue with broader implications.

The long-term success of programs is predicated on viewers knowing where to find them - remember Friends on Monday at 7.30pm? But as the audience has fragmented, so-called "appointment TV" has struggled to survive.

Pay television, the internet and the rise of retail DVD have accelerated the fragmentation, but the real threat is cherry-picking technologies that allow consumers to finetune their viewing - PVRs (personal video recorders) such as the Foxtel IQ, legal television downloads (from Bigpond), illegal television downloads (from BitTorrent) and DVD boxed sets of television shows, which have eroded their repeatability.

Viewers who once went where the program schedule pushed them no longer seem so willing. This year, Channel Ten launched Supernatural to an audience of 1.3 million, gambling that if it moved the show, the audience would follow. It didn't, shrinking to 663,000. Nine took a similar punt shifting Backyard Blitz to Friday at 7.30pm. A natural fit, given the slot was once occupied by Burke's Backyard, though the failure of the younger-skewing Our Place in the same slot should have sounded a warning bell.

But since moving to Friday, Blitz has done anything but. It premiered to a miserable 691,000 viewers, and since then has inched up to 709,000 and 942,000 - still a long way short of the 1.52 million average audience the show commanded last year. They're coming, but not as quickly as Nine hoped or, interestingly, as they might have in the past.

To move or not to move? That is the question. An early-season whisper out of Seven suggested Desperate Housewives might be shifted to Sunday to spearhead a revived schedule. Smart move? Maybe. A huge gamble? Definitely.

© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald

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