Fed: Nine's new rescue offering fails to win timeslot

AAP General News (Australia)
08-03-2009
Fed: Nine's new rescue offering fails to win timeslot

SYDNEY, Aug 3 AAP - The Nine Network's new Australian action drama Rescue Special Ops
pulled in more than a million viewers on its debut, but struggled against US offerings.

An average national audience of 1.135 million tuned in to the new drama on Sunday night.

But it wasn't enough to beat the movie The Devil Wears Prada on Ten, watched by 1.238
million, and the US series Bones, on the Seven Network, which scored 1.19 million viewers.

Starring Les Hill, Peter Phelps and Libby Tanner, Rescue Special Ops is based on an
elite team of paramedics.

Directed by Peter Andrikidis, from the first Underbelly series, the debut episode featured
a storyline about high school students being lost in the Blue Mountains.

A Nine Network spokesman said he believed the show would build its audience in the coming weeks.

"It will build because it's quality drama with a very strong ensemble cast and each
episode self-contained," the spokesman told AAP.

"It deserved considerably better last night but self-evidently was squeezed by the
back end of (Dancing With The Stars) with its wedding sequence, on the one side, and a
strong movie on the other."

Next week the show will face tough competition against the end of Australian Idol and
the movie Little Miss Sunshine on Ten, and Bones on Seven.

In other ratings figures from Sunday, Seven News was the most watched program of the
day, with just over 1.8 million viewers.

Almost 1.6 million watched Dancing With The Stars, on Seven, to make it the second
most watched show.

AAP kaf/jhp

KEYWORD: RATINGS RESCUE

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