Thumbs-Down for The Slap
July 30, 2012 
9 Comments
TV3 is pulling The Slap mid-season from 8.30 Wednesdays and replacing it with an SD re-run of Grand Designs Revisited.
The changeover occurs this week, when the HD Australian drama will shift to 9.35 Wednesday for the fourth of eight episodes, replacing Breakout Kings.
It’s disappointing a drama of The Slap’s calibre hasn’t been able to rate off the back of a local hit like The Block.
But at least TV3 is sticking with the award-winning series on the same night and without interruption.
Mind you, it scarcely could rate worse than Breakout Kings, which opened modestly and has been declining ever since.
TV3 is struggling with dramas in primetime. Homeland wasn’t the hit it should have been, Hawaii Five-0 continues to underperform, the NCIS franchise is inconsistent, Bones (which ends this week) and its spin-off, The Finder, didn’t click on Thursdays, and still in reserve are new runs of The Good Wife, Nurse Jackie, Californication, The Borgias and two seasons of The Killing and Blue Bloods.
Meanwhile, one of the year’s most Emmy-nominated dramas, American Horror Story, is slated for Four.
It’s the latest HD sensation to languish in SD on TV3’s sister network, along with Grimm, The Simpsons and Raising Hope.
In the meantime, primetime on TV3 is increasingly becoming the domain of lifestyle, light entertainment and movies. With the latest move, Tuesday will be its only weeknight drama block — and a pretty feeble one with Five-0 and re-runs of NCIS.
Ironically, Saturdays — one of the week’s least watched nights — is proving to be one of the network’s most reliable drama strongholds, with new episodes of CSI and CSI: Miami rating surprisingly well.
Meanwhile, Ad Age has just dubbed Blue Bloods and Bones two of TV’s “quiet champions” that “grow their household commercial ratings season over season”.
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July 31, 2012 at 12:09 am
I starting to think that I wish FOUR would go away 🙁
I would really like to see Grimm and American Horror Story but won’t watch them in SD on Four. Why can’t they be screened on TV3 in HD? Looks like they will both be Blu-ray imports for me.
Couldn’t agree more, although MediaWorks’ content strategy re Four is sound — ratings-wise, it’s made far bigger gains than any other FTA channel this year. So much so that it’s time MediaWorks reconsidered upgrading the service to HD given the increased ad revenue must be starting to justify the higher transmission costs. At the very least, stand-out dramas on Four should be repeated in HD late-night on 3 instead of CSI/NCIS/SVU etc.
What REALLY annoys me is when HD TV shows are put on non-HD TV channels and are then only released on DVD 🙁
Agree, Philip. Time to start a Facebook campaign?
Looking at MediaWorks’ website, the In-Sight page on future schedules for TV3 that I have seen, changes have been made. Hawaii Five-O has been pulled from its slot. Reading these articles from this site, I just found it interesting to see how well shows perform on our channels, and I see why programmers make changes. But I am annoyed it has been pulled. TV3 will show one more episode before it stops. But I must say Hawaii Five-0 is a show, as well as NCIS, Bones plus other shows, TV3 should carry on until they complete screening, but I cant save it. I understand they want more ratings. Even The Slap looked interesting but it, too, is moving to another slot. With only four episodes left to screen, TV3 might as well left it where it was. But if The Slap doesn’t perform following The Block, which does good ratings, I agree with it being moved. But only eight Hawaii Five-0 episodes have screened so far. With a further 14 to go, it would be a unlikely decison to keep it there for another couple of months with low ratings, but for me it’s a great show. It has high rating in the US, sad it doesn’t here, but it could go to another night. I looked through the TV3 ratecard – it may come back to its same slot later in the year. But it looks likely it could go to a later hour as others show have. Hawaii Five-0 did go to a later hour from low rating this time last year. And there were complaints in the TV Guide. So hats off to TV3 for giving it another try. Sad it won’t stay there. Time will tell.
Is Breakout Kings completely off the air now or is TV3 moving it to another time slot?
It’s off-air for the time being. Expect it to resume either post-Nightline or perhaps even 9.30 Saturdays, given how dramas that haven’t rated in primetime on higher-profile nights are getting a second chance there (so far CSI and CSI: Miami have rated surprisingly well).
Thanks, Philip. Whilst Breakout Kings is is not a great show, we have still found it be fairly entertaining.