They were breaking records and faces at the World Swimming Championships last night, but most Australian viewers didn’t want to know. Channel Nine’s devotion to the water was able to earn it only 23.3 per cent of the prime time audience, putting Nine in an unprecedented third place behind Ten on 23.5 per cent and Seven on 36.3 (ABC 12.0, SBS 4.9). Thorpie is sadly missed.

What Australia watched, Tuesday
1. Dancing with the Stars Seven 1.856m
2. All Saints Seven 1.576
3. Seven News Seven 1.448
4. Today Tonight Seven 1.307
5. Nine News Nine 1.276
6. NCIS Ten 1.255
7. A Current Affair Nine 1.204
8. Home and Away Seven 1.167
9. The Biggest Loser Ten 1.162
10. The Simpsons – 7:30pm Ten 1.142
11. The Simpsons – 8:00pm Ten 1.100
12. ABC News ABC 1.007
13. World Swimming Championships Nine 0.976
14. Deal or No Deal Seven 0.883
15. Ten News Ten 0.878
(OzTAM preliminary estimates, mainland capitals)

Will Nine cancel its Swimming Championships coverage or push it back later in the night? Or will they continue to put a program on in prime time that attracts less people than the ABC news. Oh my god – what have they done? I wonder if it is doing this badly in Melbourne. Do they have to keep it on due to media sponsorships?

I am having a wonderful week watching Channel Nine do so badly. What a gift!

Television manufacturer LG has failed to determine the source of a glitch in some of its televisions, which caused them to freeze when screening Nine Network’s programs, despite being notified of the problem three weeks ago.

The manufacturer said 10 models in its television range were affected, but that as far as it was aware, the problem only occurred in Sydney and Melbourne.

(Several readers – responding to this story – have reported the problem in other cities, including Brisbane and Perth.)

A statement released by LG this morning said “LG has become aware that occasional ‘freezing’ problems were experienced with selected TVs when viewing particular network digital programming in metropolitan Melbourne and Sydney over the weekend”.

But upon further questioning an LG spokeswoman admitted “LG became aware of of the issue three weeks ago, [but] did not have any data streaming recorded and therefore were unable to trace the problem”.

LG is getting some very bad press about this, including these two comments from LG customers:

I too have been affected. Funnily enough I reported the problem to them 6 months ago when I first bought the TV. Pretty crap that they won’t even advise customers directly when it’s fixed.

• Posted by: Clark Kent at March 19, 2007 10:57 PM

 

It seems that the problem lies with both channel nine and lg, the problem usually occurs between 4pm and 5pm and on HD 90. Quick recovery is:

1 Unplug the power and coax (antenna) leads.
2. plug the power lead back in only
3. Do a auto search tune.
4. Plug the coax lead back in again
5. Do another auto search tune again.

FIXED, until the next time…:)

• Posted by: matt at March 20, 2007 12:31 AM

More comments can be found at SMH: Mashup Blog.