Sydney - The tactic of launching US shows in Australia virtually day-and-date with their premieres Stateside came badly unstuck last week as Viva Laughlin bowed on the Nine Network just as CBS canned the series after two episodes.

The drama/musical, executive produced by Hugh Jackman's Seed Productions, drew just 833,000 viewers in Australia, thrashed by Seven's popular local drama series City Homicide, which arrested 1.57 million eyeballs.

In times past, Nine would have waited to have seen how the series performed in the US, and launched it early next year if the US ratings were at least respectable.

Among other US series that have launched in Oz soon after the US are Nine's Damages, Ten's Life and House, and Seven's The Bionic Woman, Heroes and Prison Break.

With only five weeks remaining in the current television season, Seven is the only commercial free-to-air network to build audiences in primetime this year—even if it's up only 0.1% in total viewers on 2006, while Nine is down 8.5% and Ten is off by 6.7%.

However that ignores the fact the FTA webs overall have lost viewers. Collectively their primetime average audiences in the five metro markets have declined by 2.5% compared to 2006. Total TV viewing has remained stable across the five metro cities with Subscription Television (STV) seeing a 16.4% hike in viewing.

And in STV households, primetime total TV viewing has increased by 9.3%, with STV's share up by 3.6% to 46.4%, according to Foxtel.

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