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Mid year ratings: It’s Seven and TEN

At the halfway point of the ratings year, Seven rules Week 28, TEN takes second, and SBS causes an upset.

dwWeek 28 is officially the half-way mark of the survey year. And what a week it turned out to be.

In a result symbolic of the year so far, Seven won every night except one, TEN finished second and Nine was relegated to third. And in a move sure to be giving commercial networks a headache, SBS also had its best week of the year.

Seven won with 27.5% ahead of TEN’s 23.1% and Nine’s 23.0%. The ABC had 16.1% and SBS 10.4%.

TEN won 16-39 and 18-49 while Seven snatched 25-54 demos. Last week Seven also won all cities.

At the halfway mark of the survey year, in the all important demographics TEN leads the year in 16-39 and 18-49. As of this week Seven pips Nine in the 25-54 demo by 0.1%. A week ago, Nine still held it over Seven -unfortunate timing for Nine.

Seven’s Packed to the Rafters returned to being the network’s best show of the week. With the addition of Melbourne viewers it lifted to 1.85m viewers. Also strong were Seven News, The Zoo, Today Tonight, Bones, Desperate Housewives, Find my Family, Thank God You’re Here and Better Homes and Gardens. The return of Dancing with the Stars impressed, waltzing away with a cool 1.57m across its 2.5 hrs. It helped Seven win Sunday night. The network will be happy if it can pull those figures each week. Sunrise’s early coverage of the Michael Jackson Memorial defeated the competition. Elsewhere, Prison Break trickles down to numbers that would see it dumped, if not for the fact that the series is nearly over. Just 168,000 watched, compared to Lipstick Jungle (232,000) in the same slot the night before. Seven also removes Surgery Saved My Life after this week, following its 471,000 -more than The Jonathan Ross Show (423,000) 24 hours earlier.

MasterChef Australia‘s Challenge on Sunday was again the week’s top show on 1.97m. Start taking bets on how high the finale will be next week? The final week is sure propel the network to envious shares, just as it readies to launch new offerings including Rush, The 7pm Project, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? and a glimpse of Glee. The reality cooking series even passed the 1.9m mark for a weeknight edition. Amazing. Once again its best performers  included Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation, Merlin, Rove, Recruits, an NCIS repeat, plus a new Simpsons episode and Good News Week.

It was a tough week for Nine. The best it could manage was 1.38m for Nine News on Sunday, with Sea Patrol, Getaway and A Current Affair its other good performers. Even 60 Minutes was hit hard last week. Nine has also removed Trouble in Paradise after its prized Thursday night was lost as sports viewers flocked to SBS. The real story of the week was the limp finale of homeMADE. Just 900,000 tuned in to watch $100,000 go off -the same cash prize as MasterChef. But did anybody care? Nine’s Michael Jackson Memorial repeat charted well, considering, with 1m viewers. Thank goodness for Saturday -it stopped Seven taking a clean sweep.

New Tricks was best for the ABC with 1.22m and the network taking second on Saturday night. But this week the ABC was also hit in the surge at SBS. Spicks and Specks was down to 1.05m and The Chaser at 992,000. Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Australian Story, Nature’s Great Events, ABC News, Grand Designs and Trial And Retribution all did good business.

The 2009 Ashes Series lifted SBS into double figures, with its best share of the year. A good sign with plenty more cricket to come. Saturday was its best night, although Friday had its biggest session with 565,000. It was actually Top Gear that was the network’s top show with 686,000 viewers.

Week 28.

25 Responses

  1. @ Johnny 1.5

    Castle was only for 10 episode up until May 11th in the USA, the next lot starts on September 21st there from what I can gather, so July 19th Episode is the final one for now.

  2. Well Nine have coming up Farmer Wants A Wife, Australia’s Perfect Couple, Dance Your Ass Off, Seven have City Homicide, Double Take, True Beauty and TV Burp thus far, it may be Rush on Ten will get a good audience Idol, 5th Grader, Rove, Good News Week, New Simpsons will be consistent, so Ten may just keep on going given what the opposition will be trying to tempt us with, Thank God You’re Here and Talkin’ Bout Your Generation both finishing will be similar rating losses, so yeah really (Sunday Night with Bones and Castle for 7 will remain for a bit yet of course).

  3. since it’s mid-year in the ratings, do you have a list of the years ratings for the year so far?

    Like what’s rating for the year, what’s not, and who’s winning what timeslot etc?

  4. there is still abother 11 week of the rubbish dwts and the cringeworthy eliminations. god that was woeful last night. i hope the rating plummit from now on end

  5. TEN wont have new NCIS until October, same goes with Lie To Me. NCIS: LA is on TEN as well, hopefully that can pick up a strong audience as well. Idol, 5th Grader etc etc will rate consistenly. They have Glee at the end of the year as well as Rush starting soon. Strong lineup.

  6. TEN’s line up hardly seems weak. Idol, 5th Grader, Rove, Good News Week, New Simpsons, New NCIS, New Lie To Me, New L&O UK, New House, Glee, 7pm Project, Rush…some great choices there.

    Someone BBBA: You can bet TEN has Masterchef wrapped up….they wouldn’t have launched into a massive production like that without first options moving forward

    Will be interesting to see what happens when Nine launches their new youth channel

  7. And just a little something I wanted to add: Seven should have just branded TV Burp at ‘The Soup: Aussie Flavour’ or something like that. As it is right now, they’d be hard tasked to find a more distasteful name for the show.

  8. Interesting how Ten was able to leverage Good News Week for a no-nothing into a fairly strong show. Very good acquisitions this year, and nice to see them taking a slightly more intelligent course when laying out their programming. They do need some stronger comedies though. Wouldn’t hurt if they maybe relaunched The Office, maybe striping it as a 7:30 show, and showcasing new episodes after its got a good penetration. I will say, Glee is a damn good acquisition, as the cross-promotion potential is great, though I’ll be interested to see just how it does in the ratings once the US season starts airing proper.

    I think this weeks performance spells out quite well how we’ll be seeing the respective networks performing over the next few years. Nine is continuing its graceless decline, and the reveal of Go will no doubt be just another repeat of the mess they’re are in. What they really need now is a management restructure, and not just the culling of the sacrificial lamb. Throw out the CEO, and all the other dead wood. Get a consultant or ten from the US, and get them to tear apart the whole structure. Who cares about the ‘spirit’ of Nine, or them not having Aussie sensibilities, as a completely outside perspective is exactly what they need.

  9. I understand the Powers That Be at the Nork Network have made a substantial offer to the entire cast of the Harry Potter movies to take over the hosting of all of the network’s shows in the hope it may improve ratings…

  10. I wouldn’t be surprised if Nine tried to buy Masterchef next year… I’m not saying they would succeed, but surely it would be something to consider, especially given Ten’s financial troubles at the moment.

  11. I am glad to see TEN doing well, even though I am not a fan of Masterchef and much preferred Big Brother which probably caused TEN’s failure.

    Nine doing bad is great, haha – it brings me, too, much joy to see.
    Seven winning isn’t surprising.

    I agree that once Masterchef is over, TEN will probably sink again with a very weak line up. My only hope is that a new look Idol (?) will pump up ratings and hopefully Seven will do well with the 7pm Project. However without Talking bout your generation and Masterchef it does not look good – especially with Rove taking a 4 week hiatus (?), although there maybe be good ratings upon it’s return.

  12. Either you have posted the wrong daily figures on the ratings or cannot add up, I have nine at 23.04% and ten at 22.8%. Even the seven figure comes to 24.4%. So which one is it? Did nine get second or figures given out are wrong.

  13. This year has turned out to be a breakout year for Ten. Very few failures lost amogst their smash hits. Though Come Monday week, I think Ten will back to a customary third position. Their schedule looks awfully weak without Masterchef.

    Ten’s fortunes look to have come at Nine’s expense. Though with their core programs of 2.5 Men repeats and 20 to 1, it’s hard to feel sorry for them. Watch Gyngell come out spin their performance into a positive.

    Big total people win for Seven, and also winning their 25-54 demo. Their mid year sched also looks a little weak, though with Rafters, Dancing, and soon City Homicide to buoy their schedule they’ll still continue their domination. Though some of their reality shows (True Beauty) and new shows (TV Burp) have fail written all over them.

  14. I thought this was the year Nine was going to fight back ‘Nine in ’09’?

    It’s clear only a complete collapse by Seven will stop it from winning it’s 3rd year in a row.

    Good on TEN for taking advantage with some great programing choices.

  15. For once the rating sums up how I (and probably many other viewers) feel and watch. Both Seven & Ten have shows I want to watch, Nine has little if any.
    Even SBS & ABC provide decent entertainment.

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