Second time around

Oz webs find loving auds for castoff skeins

By MICHAELA BOLAND

SYDNEY -- "The West Wing" is canceled Stateside and was dropped by Australia's web Nine a couple of years ago -- but that hasn't fazed the Australian Broadcasting Corp., which cranked publicity into top gear ahead of the show's Feb. 23 launch.

The pubcaster believes it will be a hit with its older-skewing audience, many of them fans who have missed the drama since it was dumped by Nine after 13 eps of season five.

The ABC is launching the series commercial free on Thursday nights from the start of season four to give auds a chance to catch up. Many lost track of story threads during Nine's continual slot changes and stop/start programming, as it attempted to repeat the skein's U.S. success.

"It's going to give us three years," ABC programmer Marena Manzoufas tells Variety. "It's the kind of American drama that will sit well with our audience."

In Oz, there's a fine tradition of networks making successes of discarded product.

Famously, Network Ten picked-up "Neighbours" when the Seven Network axed the five-day-a-week soap after 130 eps in 1985. Now in its 21st year, "Neighbours" pulls 750,000 viewers each evening.

Where the ABC tends to attract an older audience to its serious news, current affairs, drama and entertainment in primetime, Ten's aud is 16-39, making those two webs good destinations for shows that broader channels Seven and Nine fail to make work.

ABC and Ten also have tighter programming budgets. Ten picked up "Seinfeld" and "Everyone Loves Raymond" after they were dumped by Nine. Both programs became enormous hits and schedule staples for Ten.

In the last few months, Ten has launched "Smallville," "Supernatural" and "Veronica Mars," all pick-ups from Nine that either didn't work or, in the case of "Supernatural," didn't even get scheduled.

"You can't just assume a show's going to bite from day one," says Ten programmer David Mott. "Maybe we can afford to give these shows a few more weeks than Nine."

"Futurama" is another Ten pickup now achieving top-10 results.

Toon originally aired on Seven to little fanfare "and that should have been the end of its cycle," Mott says. But it's been tapping 1 million plus auds on Tuesdays off the back of "The Simpsons," so Mott has re-inked for the rights to air the series again.

Ten also provided a home to chatshow host Rove McManus after the Nine Network dumped the then junior funny guy when his show failed to fire after a few weeks. Re-launched by Ten in 1999, "Rove Live" has since become a late-evening staple for the channel.

Mott describes Ten as "the little engine that does, because we haven't been flush with budgets; we have had to make shows work harder."