Lego Stymies Magnum, Blocks H5O

Three’s building-block launch of Magnum P.I. has been sabotaged by another Wednesday night premiere.

The season premiere of Lego Masters Australia has come in longer than the network expected, and now will air from 7.30-9.25.

Rather than push back the 8.30 debut of Magnum PI to next week, Three will screen it an hour later than planned.

But the rescheduling means the return of Hawaii Five-O is being postponed until May 8.

The changes also mean Thursday afternoon’s Lego Masters Australia repeat will pre-empt the 1.35 movie, A Deadly View, while the Saturday afternoon re-run will shift forward to 3.05 and pre-empt The Goldbergs and Fresh Off the Boat. (Separately, Three’s also replacing its 1.30 Wednesday movie, Nightmare Moms, with Sweet Home Carolina.)

The disruption will be a blow to Three’s programmers, who had strategically hammocked the Magnum reboot in a plum slot between a new show with terrific prospects and a returning series that’s steadily built an audience in the face of choppy scheduling.

It’s even going to the extent of previewing Magnum PI to media in a Hawaiian-themed screening this afternoon at an Auckland cinema.

But the inconvenience will be worth it if Lego Masters Australia rates as well here as it did in Australia on Sunday. Reports TV Tonight:

Lego Masters has hit the ground running for Nine launching to a whopping 1.38m viewers and topping Sunday night viewing.

That’s officially higher than Married at First Sight’s season debut this year which was 1 million in the same 5 city overnights. That makes it the highest new program launch of 2019 to date.

The show easily beat the return of House Rules which was 762,000, up on last year’s 607,000. Lego Masters topped all the demos and even won in Seven’s diehard city of Perth.