HD Heads-Up: July 24 – 30

➢➢ Three will resort to movies to try to rebuild Thursday nights. It will launch the new-look 8.30 slot with a fair-dinkum old favourite, ‘Crocodile’ Dundee, on July 29. The movies will replace Demolition Down Under, which has been hammered by the competition since its debut, and a 9.30 documentary slot. Previously, Three tried to turn Thursdays into the light-ent version of its successful Friday line-up but shows like 7 Days and The Graham Norton Show never fired in their new slots …

➢➢ Despite the profusion of movies across all media platforms, they continue to be a convenient band-aid solution for free-to-air networks when they suddenly have a hole to fill because of failed programming strategies. Prime recently used movies to plug gaps on Thursday and Saturday nights, and has added a family movie slot on Fridays. And often movies that once would have been consigned to the video store bargain bin can tap into a new or nostalgic audience, such as last week’s The Incredible Hulk on Three …

➢➢ Three will also screen the sole FTA movie premiere in the last week of July: Hustlers (8.30 Sunday). Other HD coming attractions will include:

• Mirror Mirror (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Saturday)
• Minions (Three, 7.00 Saturday)
• The Cabin in the Woods (Duke, 8.30 Saturday)
• Loving Vincent (Maori TV, 8.40 Saturday)
• Training Day (Three, 8.45 Saturday)
• Hitch (TVNZ 2, 8.55 Saturday)
• Our Brand is Crisis  (TVNZ 2, 11.15 Saturday)
• Getaway (TVNZ 2, 1.15am Saturday)
• Queen of Katwe (TVNZ 2, 2.45am Sunday)
• Macbeth (Maori TV, 8.30 Sunday)
• Central Intelligence (TVNZ 2, 8.35 Sunday)
• Lights Out (TVNZ 2, 12.20am Monday)
• Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (Prime. 8.30 Monday)
• Fallen (Duke, 8.30 Tuesday)
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Three, 7.30 Friday)
• Hotel Transylvania 2 (Prime, 7.30 Friday)
• Beverly Hills Cop II (Duke, 8.30 Friday)
• Ender’s Game (Maori TV, 8.30 Friday) …

➢➢ Surprisingly, TVNZ 2 has opted to pre-empt Have You Been Paying Attention? to accommodate Coronation Street on Friday nights during the Olympics. The TVNZ 1 warhorse will air on its sister channel instead of Would I Lie to You? on Wednesdays and Filthy House SOS on Thursdays. But instead of replacing 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown on Fridays, TVNZ 2 instead will rest HYBPA and air Cats an hour earlier — a curious strategy given it’s just started to bed HYBPA into its new Friday slot …

➢➢ Season two of TVNZ 2’s Kura will screen 10.45 Mondays from July 26, the same night Wife Swap Australia ends its run. And the network will refresh its weekend afternoon line-ups with new seasons of The Voice Kids UK (3.30 Saturdays), Junior Bake Off (5.00 Saturdays) and AP Bio (1.40 Sundays) …

➢➢ Finally, now that The Brokenwood Mysteries has completed its latest season on TVNZ 1, Prime will try to capitalise on any new viewers its former property might have attracted by re-running S3 on Saturday nights from July 24.