news articles 24 february 2005

[Inside Australian Idol]

Dicko pleads Kyle's case
Dicko's got a lot of hide to be telling Idol viewers to give >his successor a go ... but then, Dicko's got a lot of hide
24feb05

OUTGOING Idol judge Dicko has urged viewers to give his successor, Kyle Sandilands, a go.


Fair go: Dicko checks out a Melbourne coffee shop.
Picture: Darren McNamara

Dicko, who was on a whirlwind visit to Melbourne yesterday for My Restaurant Rules, said he had given Sandilands some advice.

"I think he polarises people and I do think he's high risk," Dicko said.

"Polarising people isn't in itself a danger, but if you do it to such an extent it's unwatchable then it's a problem.

"I just said to him, 'Look, as long as you're going to be yourself and be honest you'll be fine'.

"But if he tries to be a prick for the sake of it he'll get slaughtered. I say give the guy a chance."

Now that Idol is history for the Birmingham-born former record exec, he's focusing on his new challenge at Channel 7.

Dicko had nothing but praise for our Melbourne boys, Dan Viney and Rob Gangi.

"I think there's a certain cluelessness about them which I love," he said.

"Everything they do is based on instinct, but they stuck to their guns (with their controversial chef decision) and it's going to be a top-drawer eatery, seriously."

"They've got a great chef, a great position and a great attitude."

But with the St Kilda eatery ready for their first customers tonight (only friends and family at this stage), Dicko said that the show's mystery couple would pose a threat.

"I reckon within five weeks they (Elle MacPherson's chef Nathan and partner Georgia) will be running a restaurant," he said.

"It might be a new restaurant or an existing one."

But you'll have to watch tonight's episode to get to the bottom of that one.


www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,12350850%255E2902,00.html

[Inside Australian Idol]

Olive branch and martinis
THE newly merged Sony BMG held a gala launch in Sydney – and The Eye was there for all the action
24feb05

THE Voice, John Farnham, the star attraction on the night, received an award for his contribution to music from the chairman of the new company Denis Handlin.


What about him? Shannon Noll arrives for the launch of the newly merged Sony BMG in Sydney.
Picture: Craig Greenhill

Handlin asked Farnham's manager Glenn Wheatley and wife Gaynor to join him on stage and nice things were said all around.

This might seem like nothing unusual, but Handlin is one of Delta and Lea Goodrem's strongest allies, and was with her all the way during the Goodrem's very bitter split with Wheatley.

During the split Farnham was on the BMG side of things, while Handlin was the head of Goodrem's record company Sony.

The way they acted publicly on Tuesday night, it looks like Handlin and Wheatley have well and truly put the bitter split behind them.

Delta's top of pops

TALKING of Goodrem, she has just been made a top-priority act with Sony BMG internationally.

She will release her first Aussie No.1, Born To Try, in the very competitive US market in June.

Anthony's here, but ...

MELBOURNE boy Anthony Callea is a big priority for the label, and has a new song, Rain, which has been released to radio. Callea has finished his first album.

But despite her new single What's Going On playing in the background, there was not a mention on the night of Idol winner Casey Donovan and what the company has planned for her future.

Good bloke, that Noll

AFTERWARDS the party headed back to the Vibe hotel, where Shannon Noll stayed to stumps around 3am.

Noll is one of the most down-to-earth blokes you'll ever meet and hasn't changed a bit since Idol.

He has finished eight new tracks for his coming album.

Star-studded

OTHER artists who performed on the night included Melbourne dance act Infusion, Tammin Sursok, Pete Murray, Velvet Revolver, Guy Sebastian and country group Bella.


www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,12350654%255E2902,00.html

[Inside Australian Idol]

Seven up (and up)
February 24, 2005

Channel Seven, bolstered by hit shows and sheer luck, has its best chance to challenge Channel Nine. Michael Idato reports.

The launch of this year's ratings season has been one of the most thrilling in years. Heavy artillery - including Desperate Housewives, StarStruck, Lost, The X Factor and Dancing with the Stars - has been fired by the commercial broadcasters, and long-time rivals Seven and Nine are locked in a struggle for number one.

The first week of ratings (of 40) ended in a photo finish, with Nine edging ahead of Seven by just 0.4 per cent. Seven seems to have all the cards in its hand, but can it capitalise on this and finally beat Channel Nine?

"Thinking about that equation is not something that has taken up a lot of our time," Seven's head of programming, Tim Worner, says. "We have concentrated on getting away to the best possible start, and making sure we optimise those shows we believe have enormous potential."

Worner chooses his words carefully, and his humility is slightly disingenuous. A combination of factors, including sheer good luck, have put Seven in this position, and no matter how Worner underplays it, this is Seven's one big shot. If it fails to reshape the landscape this year, a win in 2006 is unlikely.

"All (Seven's) ducks lined up in terms of their season launch," Nine's director of programming, Michael Healy, says. "They could not have had a better run in the Australian Open tennis, and with Bec Cartwright and Lleyton Hewitt's engagement and the subsequent publicity. Seven exploited that from a marketing perspective, and rightly so."

Audience spikes for the tennis gave Seven a strong launch pad for its two new American hits, Desperate Housewives and Lost, while Cartwright and Hewitt were strategically inserted into Today Tonight (their first interview) and Dancing with the Stars (her encore, as last year's winner, with him cheering on the sideline).

The results have been astonishing, with Seven threatening to trump Nine for the first time in years. It has made gains in the morning (Seven's Sunrise now romps home against Nine's Today) and, aided by a resurgent evening news, actually won the first week in Sydney. Nine, on the back of the hit film Meet the Parents, claimed the week nationally.

It's a remarkable turnaround for Seven given that last year it faced the real threat of falling into third place behind Ten.

Nine's sustained dominance of free-to-air TV has been built on consistency. Seven's wins this year are huge spikes across an unremarkable schedule. Nine might have failed to match the audience peaks of Desperate Housewives and Lost but there has always been enough meat on the bone to see off most serious competition.

The problem for Nine is that Seven's increased audience, even for only a handful of shows, allows it to promote its other programs more effectively.

"When you have two key shows as tent poles, you can build timeslots and then build nights," says Channel Ten's program director, David Mott. "The trick is to see how Seven capitalises on those shows."

And how quickly. It is inevitable ratings for Desperate Housewives and Lost will stabilise at more realistic levels (last week Housewives slipped below 2 million viewers, but rallied to peak above 2.3 million on Monday night). "When all the hype subsides ... it will settle down," Mott says.

Seven has a poor history of capitalising on good ratings. Long-term audience windfalls following the last four Olympic Games, the Manchester Commonwealth Games and the Rugby World Cup failed to materialise, largely due to poor program development. Hit shows were far outnumbered by failures.

Seven has also struggled to get big returns from American programming, partly because of the uneven demographic breakdown of its audience compared with Nine's (which is more evenly distributed) and Ten's (which is focused on 16-39s). Potential hits such as Will & Grace and Scrubs failed to match their US ratings, while Everybody Loves Raymond found success only when it was sold to Ten.

Last year, however, was Seven's strongest year of development in recent history. The capital-H hit Dancing with the Stars, coupled with the more modestly successful My Restaurant Rules, Border Security and Forensic Investigators, allowed Seven to build.

"In many ways, 2004 was a classic rebuilding year," Worner says. "We have been able to bring a number of new shows out of that year and press them straight into battle in 2005."

Nine is confident it can meet the challenge, though its early shots have been surprisingly off-aim. Of three new shows, only one, Celebrity Overhaul, has been a hit. The others, StarStruck and the Friends spin-off Joey, are hovering around the million-viewer mark.

"When the dust settles, you will see exactly who stands where," Healy says. "It is a long way from now to week 40 and the one thing we (Nine) know with our current schedule, and what we have in production and pre-production, is that we offer consistency."

Healy may be calm, but Nine is clearly rattled. Its schedule has been amended repeatedly. Last week it rolled out two new episodes of CSI in one week, a tactic known as "double-pumping", and brought forward the launch of one of its biggest guns, CSI: New York.

"We are fortunate with CSI and the procedural dramas that they provide enormous repeat value," Healy says. Mott, whose network owns three Law & Order series, is not so sure. "Do you double-pump? At the moment, no, I don't believe we do. What little ground you may make at the moment, you lose at the back end."

For now, Ten seems outside the main game. Its performance this year is better than last but numbers can be deceiving. Ten's 2004 figures were abnormally low due to The HotHouse and The Resort. This year's lacklustre launches for The X Factor and Aussie Queer Eye for the Straight Guy have hit Ten hard.

The intense competition between 6pm and 7.30pm is hurting Ten demographically, but Mott expects that to improve when Big Brother is rolled out in the second quarter of the year. "We are trending OK against substantially increased competition," he says.

The programmers, meanwhile, are planning strategies for the rest of the year. Seven is to launch two new Australian dramas, Campus and Last Man Standing, plus Medical Emergency and an American medical drama, Grey's Anatomy.

Ten has a series of Battlestar Galactica, a new American hit, Numb3rs, the AFL season, Australian Idol and an extended Big Brother. Nine has Friday and Sunday night AFL in Melbourne and rugby league in Sydney, CSI: New York, the HBO series Rome and a new local drama, The Alice.

In many ways the second half of the year is where the real fight lies because it will expose how effectively Seven has capitalised on the success of Desperate Housewives, Lost and Dancing with the Stars. "I would say it's a handy start but it's only a start," Worner says.

"There is a long road ahead, and there is a lot more hard work to do."


www.theage.com.au/news/TV--Radio/Seven-up-and-up/2005/02/23/1109046929768.html