0/5

Modest debut for Nine’s new arvo

Nine's new afternoon show was beaten by both its rivals, but at least it lifted its share.

ta11First figures are in for THIS afternoon and they are modest: 321,000 viewers.

The debut of the new show was beaten by The Bold and The Beautiful / TEN News at Five (543,000/ 1.08m) and Seven News at 4:30 / MASH (430,000 / 584,000).

The good news is it improved on Nine’s position. Last Monday Nine Afternoon News took 263,000 for its half hour edition.

Interest was strongest in Sydney (109,000) followed by Melbourne (95,000). In Brisbane, where Extra became a casualty of the new show, it took 60,000.

The new show also now gives us the first true head to head result between Deal or No Deal (930,000) and Hot Seat (721,000).

Seven News won in all cities with Melbourne Nine’s strongest performer.

No doubt Nine will be hoping the audience becomes more aware of its new offering, conscious of the fact these things take time to build.

Meanwhile the network fared better with Sea Patrol ahead of Desperate Housewives, Seven scored with a UK doco The Michael Jackson Story and Top Gear Australia took its lowest audience this season, 487,000.

Week 27

19 Responses

  1. Sydney is the largest TV market which includes the Central Coast. Then Melbourne which includes Geelong. Then Brisbane which includesGold Coast.
    Melbourne as a market seems to watch more TV though.

  2. It’s well known the TV market in Melbourne often has more HUTs that is households using televison. For cultural or lifestyle reasons people tere seem to watch more TV than Sydney.

  3. @Rob: You’d perhaps be better off not watching anything at all or possibly watching youtube if that’s what you’re after. I can’t imagine the people at channel nine furiously scribbling counting pigs on their notepads.

  4. David, I don’t get your comment? What do you mean by a conspiracy theory?
    Also to set the record straight, which is the biggest television market? It is certainly true that most shows have a bigger audience in Melbourne. I thought this meant that Melburnians watched more TV, for whatever reasons.

  5. I think that’s a very respectable number.
    In it’s first outing this afternoon had more viewers than 20 year old Today franchise. I think that is very decent. It will fall Tuesday and then hopefully even out an find it’s groove both creatively and ratings wise.

    You can’t compare it it to Ten’s 5 local editions of Ten News as they run 5-6 and This afternoon runs in the earlier time period of 430-530 with lower viewing number than the 530-6 period. As more and more people get home more and more TVs are switched on.

    Also we can’t really say interest was strongest in Sydney based on the fact more people tuned in; Sydney is the largest TV market so naturally viewing numbers there will be higher. We need to see the shares for each market or compare the viewing numbers against the TV market size to know where there was the most interest.

  6. i expect the ratings to be a bit like hot seat. big first episode then drop scarily over the next 2 weeks and then if it is kept it will slowly make some ground. but it does have a lot of ground to make.

  7. It wasn’t great but it wasn’t a disaster either. First run, give the hosts a few weeks to develop synergy and feel comfortable with one another in a live TV environment. Everyone is a critic and happy to comment and make a judgement on one performance – lucky they are not TV executives.

    1. Geoff having a reaction to a TV debut is no different to commenting after hearing a 3 minute song for the first time, or passing judgement after seeing the first episode of I Love Lucy. The difference is we now have the web to facilitate it instantly. On a TV blog, we should expect such comment and hope there is an array of opinion. Passion is a good thing. That said, I actually held off a formal review for the first ep.

  8. Personally I’d like to see it do more human interest stories about animals, like the cat who can count or surfing pigs. That’s the kind of current affairs I want to see in the afternoon, something non-confrontational and easily digestible, something I don’t really learn anything from and don’t think about later.

  9. I reckon that it’s ratings will pick up in time, however, i said the same for Nine’s 4:30 News years ago, and it never grew by much. At least it was up on last Monday’s news by 60,000, which is a good thing. At least Ten is still number 1 during the daytime (minus the ‘morning shows’).

Leave a Reply