Premiere reaction, Aidan and Aussie ratings

- We've been scouring the web trying to find some reactions to the Fiver premiere of Out of the Blue from new viewers. In the interests of fairness we'll include a selection of good and bad from what we've found:

littlelau, Handbag Forum: "Seems a bit boring so far [...] At the moment it doesn't seem like a soap, more like a drama that will turn into a murder mystery."

Slade, Back to the Bay: "Ok, well I watched the first episode and it seemed a bit anticlimatic but it is early days so I'll give it a chance. During the voiceover it was mentioned that one of them was going to be murdered so I look forward to seeing that."

ukdiva23, Digital Spy: "I recorded it because it clashes with Corrie, I don't think Fiver thought it through putting it on head to head with the major soaps like EastEnders and Corrie [...] I quite enjoyed the first episode though, so will definitely continue watching."

Tyleer, Digital Spy: "I really enjoyed it, so will definitely continue to watch it and hope I can really get into it [...] I also agree that they should put it on at an early time to get more viewers but as I can't stand Corrie it doesn't affect me."

It probably is fair to say that the first episode is the least action-packed of the lot, so it will be interesting to see how reactions change as the series progresses.

- Writing on the Facebook group about his stint on Home and Away, Aidan Gillett (Daniel McManus) has confirmed that he will be on-screen in Australia by February 13. Remember that the UK airings are currently two weeks behind those in Aus.

- It looks like Out of the Blue is starting to struggle a bit in the ratings in Australia. The show performed really well during its two-month stint in a 10.30pm slot on Ten - with an estimated average audience of 335,000, and with figures looking set to soon reach 400,000 before being taken out of the slot. These were respectable figures given the episodes were on so late.

Unfortunately, since moving to 6pm on Sundays, those figures have dropped. Two weeks ago the show debuted in its new slot with 170,000 viewers. At the weekend, it had 266,000 viewers - an increase, but still disappointing. Part of the reason for this is that the 6pm Sunday slot was probably the most competitive one the show could have been put in. In Australia, news programmes are always the highest-rated shows of the day, and Out of the Blue was unlucky enough to be put up against two of them - Seven News and Nine News.

To put things in perspective, on Sunday Seven News had 2,000,000 viewers and Nine News had 1,272,000. That's a massive chunk of the available audience watching news shows! Out of the Blue's move to a 5.30pm-6.30pm slot this weekend could possibly address this problem - it'll have a 30-minute advantage over the news shows and will hopefully keep hold of viewers over the hour.

Another issue is that the show could at least build up some momentum in its 4-nights-a-week 10.30pm slot. Such a low number of episodes each week prevents that a little bit.

Whatever happens, the official ratings season has now started in Australia and so Ten will obviously be watching closely to see how the show performs. Maybe the show just needs time to settle into its new slot - after all, it dropped to just over 200,000 at 10.30pm at the start of January before shooting back up to the high 300,000s the week after. We'll keep passing on any info we can find!