As reported widely today across the Blogsphere including on TV Tonight, Crikey and Mumbrella, the Spearman Experiment on Channel 10 last night  had an incredible drop in the ratings for its second outing.
The program, hosted by Magda Szubanski, premiered last week with 1.039 million viewers, however yesterday’s showing saw a 30%Â drop in viewing numbers, with 669,000 viewers tuning in, according to OzTam. This is one of the largest drops in audience viewer numbers from the premiere episode that this author can remember. The show even lost viewers from ‘the 7pm project’ which polled 780,000 viewers for the night.
The 30% drop in audience was more than the recent drop on 2DayFM’s Kyle & Jackie O show, which experienced an 18% drop in audience over the last ratings survey.
The major criticism of the Spearman Experiment (which this author agrees with) is its similarity to Nine’s 20 to 1. As was noted on a Facebook status “is flicking back and forward between Channel 9 and Channel 10, and is not seeing any difference. Current status of the future of Australian television: bright.”
It will be interesting to see Ten’s response in the coming days, given its quick response to viewer demands in shifting Australian Idol to 7:30 on Sunday nights.
For the record the top rating show last night was Seven’s ‘Packed to the Rafters’ with 1.8 million viewers.
Criminal Minds is a great tv-series, i it just like CSI in my opinion but only better*,”