Throng

Late Sunday night, I decided to watch Underbelly: The Golden Mile I had recorded earlier. As I chose the recording from my PVR, my fingers were poised on the fast forward button in readiness to fast forward through the usual five to ten minute overrun of 60 Minutes.

To my surprise, however, the immediate beginning of the recording showed the last minute of 60 Minutes, then credits rolled, then Underbelly started. Allowing for the two minute pre-overrun of the recording (meaning it started recording at 8.28) that meant Underbelly started at exactly 8.30pm. While the first two minutes were made up of a montage basically summing up the series so far, it still came as a surprise to see the show actually start on time and not up to ten minutes late as used to be typical for channel Nine. At the same time, Ten’s 8.30 show was scheduled for 8.36 by the EPG while Seven also started Bones later than 8.30.

Then on Monday night - in watching back the Mentalist (I generally do not watch anything live) - it happened again! The Mentalist started at exactly 8.30pm. CSI: Miami after it also started exactly on time.

To another issue, however: Nightline - which both the program and the EPG say start at 11.30 ends up starting at 11.20 - meaning you’ll miss 10 minutes of the news if you assume the show was still starting at 11.30. Nightline almost always starts early, except on Wednesday nights - so why don’t they just put 11.20 in the program so people will know when it really starts?

Having shows start exactly on time on Nine during evening prime time is a novelty. Especially since Hey Hey always runs late despite the fact we have to hear Daryl try and hurry things along a number of times in each show. In fact - this business of Daryl looking at his watch, trying to hurry segments along and complaining about being on time is a real turn off to watching Hey Hey now when it continues to run up to 20 minutes late, like it did last Wednesday. Hey Daryl - how about less waffle and better time management of the real content?

Given that the year to date ratings so far has the Nine network just 0.1% ahead of Seven, running programs on time could be a new strategy for the network to help win the ratings war - seeing that consistently late running programming and changing schedules are the two biggest complaints against commercial free to air television networks.