Challengers cook up ratings winners
MasterChef Australia, Talkin' Bout Your Generation, Spicks and Specks and The Chaser all upstaged Seven and Nine in the latest ratings war.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
Week 22 saw Network TEN and the ABC give the usually dominant Seven and Nine a wake up call. Light entertainment shows continue to soar with viewers and TEN’s latest reality show is by now a bonafide hit.
Still, yet again it was Seven that won the week with a 27.5% share over Nine’s 25.7% and TEN’s 24.2%. The ABC had 17.5% and SBS 5.2%.
Seven won Monday, Wednesday, Friday, TEN won Sunday and Tuesday, leaving Nine with Thursday and Saturday. Impressively ABC was second on Saturday.
Even more impressive was a win by TEN in all three key demo groups 16-39, 18-49 and 25-54. Seven won all five city shares.
Top show for the week was again Seven News (Sunday) with 1.83m, with other strong performers including Today Tonight, Thank God You’re Here, The Zoo, Find My Family, Better Homes and Gardens, Sunday Night, Bones and Criminal Minds. Scrubs has also demonstrated it is now significantly more popular on Mondays than How I Met Your Mother. Seven’s serial dramas including Desperate Housewives, All Saints and Home and Away are meeting stiff competition. Despite Nine’s earlier inroads, Sunrise is a solid 100,000 ahead of Today. Thursdays are a regular loss to Nine -luckily Fridays are so strong.
As with last week Nine News (Sunday) was tops for the week for Nine with 1.66m viewers, unfortunately too many avoid homeMADE and headed to TEN thereafter, only to slowly drift back for 60 Minutes. Also strong were Sea Patrol, new Two and a Half Men, Getaway and RPA. Tuesday was a disaster, unable to compete with big offerings elsewhere. With repeat sitcoms and a repeat movie everywhere but one city, who should be surprised? CSI is now losing to Bones and Rove. Nine wil be grateful State of Origin returns this week, with Seven all but rolling over and laying down for the night.
TEN’s MasterChef Australia (Sunday) 1.67m and Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation (1.64m) nearly topped the week. Sunday’s MasterChef is now doing better than So You Think You Can Dance and Big Brother last did. Together with NCIS, Rove, Merlin and Lie to Me, TEN snatched two nights this week -including the prized Sunday title, traditionally a two horse race. Recruits and Good News Week also passed 1m. But the network shine was lost by SVU’s dire performance when a new episode managed just 616,000, less than the ep which followed it: 801,000. Did enough people know it was now a Wednesday show or was ABC comedy simply too irresistable? Worst Week also tanked. Better news for ONE which pulled a big 200,000 for the FIA Formula One World Championship.
It was the ABC’s comedy night that carried it to the finish line with a whopping 1.6m for Spicks and Specks (the network’s best all year) and 1.54m for the return of The Chaser‘s War on Everything. ABC News, Silent Witness, New Tricks and Australian Story. Foreign Correspondent is doing decent business in its new 8pm slot.
Top Gear Australia was again best for SBS with 608,000 and Richard Hammond’s Engineering Connection did well on Saturday with 381,000.
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- Tagged with 60 Minutes, ABC News, All Saints, Australian Story, Better Homes and Gardens, Big Brother, Bones, Criminal Minds, CSI, Desperate Housewives, FIA Formula One, Find my Family, Foreign Correspondent, Getaway, Good News Week, Home and Away, homeMADE, How I Met Your Mother, Law and Order: SVU, Lie to Me, MasterChef Australia, Merlin, NCIS, New Tricks, Nine News, Recruits, Richard Hammond’s Engineering Connection, Rove, RPA, Scrubs, Sea Patrol, Seven News, Silent Witness, So You Think You Can Dance, Spicks and Specks, State of Origin, Sunday Night, Sunrise, Talkin 'Bout Your Generation, Thank God You're Here, The Chaser's War on Everything, The Zoo, Today, Today Tonight, Top Gear Australia, Two and a Half Men, Worst Week
10 Responses
You mentioned the numbers for ONE HD; so the HD channels are now being surveyed?
Ten winning the demos is more important than Seven winning overall viewers.
So really the week goes to Ten!
oops, meant to mention Biggest Loser in my last sentence.
Well I was dubious that Ten would hold the audience’s audience six nights a week with Masterchef but I was wrong. I’m only watching Sun/Mon more by accident than by design and it is holding up well. Whether Ten can replicate that in 2010 and beyond is another story.
Perhaps if they do Masterchef again next year, and Big Brother in 2011 they can avoid burning out their audience? Or introduce yet another strip show and rotate between SYTYCD/Idol/BB/MC/other ?
creamydelight – unfortunately there are a few obstacles to Ten winning a week – their 6-7 hour falls well behind seven and nine, and their thursdays, fridays and saturdays often let them down, particularly where AFL is played in primetime into cities which don’t have a team in the match, where mid-teen shares are the result.
I predict TEN will win a week or 2 sooner rather than later. Will TEN be regular #2 2010? I hope so. God they have tried and certainly deserve it.
Just goes to show that new, creative and different programming is outperforming the same old formulas and repeats.
“Did enough people know it was now a Wednesday show or was ABC comedy simply too irresistable?”
Don’t know about the rest of the country, but I was watching ‘The Mentalist’. That trumps SVU for me.
Shame SVU didn’t do better, I would of expected it to hit a million. The show does has potential but I guess it was against ABC’s comedy hour.
Btw the second episode of SVU was not a repeat, it was a double new episode.
I’m loving these comprehensive summaries, David. What a week for the ABC and TEN indeed!