It looks as though Channel Seven is trying to get one of it’s US drama’s to fail and die a slow death. Maybe they want Viola Davis to come out here and solve the mystery, although there isn’t much to figure out.

A recurring problem is that they refuse to fast track an American show. A majority of the shows we air here from overseas will start in September, but due to that being the season ratings are low in Australia, the networks will hold off on shows and air them in February “after the Tennis”.

This worked fine and well in the pre-internet days. Although over the past ten years people have got smarter. The internet allows us to communicate with the rest of the world, and when people started to realise we were getting the raw end of the deal, piracy started to rise.

Now there is stupid and incredibly stupid. Most times the networks are stupid. Every year they will advertise the hell out of the biggest shows they acquired from the states. Anyone remember that summer where every time you would turn on Channel Seven, they would be showing a ad for Revenge with Coldplay’s “Paradise” blasting through the speaker. Me too.

By the time February rolled around everyone was watching was watching Revenge. When Seven went to air season two the following year, there had been a massive ratings drop. Reason being many of the die hard Revenge fans would of been watching it on their laptops hours after the US in September the year before.

So that was being stupid, now Seven have taken it to a new level, in a bid to be what I’m calling “incredibly stupid”. This years big show Seven wanted everyone to know about was Shona Rhimes’ How To Get Away With Murder. Like always Seven decided it would be a good idea to wait until “after the Tennis”.

After a good four months of ad’s for the show, they finally got around to putting it on February 10th in a 9PM time slot. 9PM isn’t terrible, but 8.30PM is much better, due to a super sized MKR every night that wasn’t going to happen. The 8.30PM vs 9PM is a whole other story, so I’ll get back on track.

Even though the first episode was five months old by that point it still got decent ratings in Australia. Jump forward to around April and the show is put on hold for a month due to Easter. Every year they make the same mistake of stoping the flow of shows for two weeks, due to Easter being a non-ratings period. Can we scrap that idea?

This past week HTGAWM came back on our screens. The first season of Murder was a short on with only fifteen episodes, so by this time the whole first season has finished and is ready to be downloaded for your binge watching pleasures. The 10th episode (out of 15) aired this week at 9.45PM. An even latter start time will not help its case, and since it’s had a month off, many people have forgotten about it, and the ratings were nowhere in comparison to what it managed at the start of the year.

Seven has now decided to make the problem worse. The show is back off again for two weeks, will be replaced by Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. It will return Monday the 1st of June, starting at 10.40PM. What a joke. If you felt not enough viewers tuned in at 9.45PM, why will they sit up an hour latter.

By the time the season final airs in Australia, it will be 18 weeks since it aired in the United States.

This is a constant problem with Australian television. If you are able to find a show that you like that isn’t about building, cooking, weight loss or dating, it’s more than likely that the show will either a) be moved from night to night constantly or b) have a terribly start time.

Okay so I think I just explained how to kill a TV show, was I also able to convince you why illegal downloading is so high in the land down under too?