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ABC1 wins Debate but X Factor beats Australia’s Got Talent

Ratings: ABC1's primary channel debate was twice any multichannel broadcast, but the real right was over talent shows and X Factor came out on top.

debateLet there be not debate – ABC1 won the Leader’s Debate last night, as the only primary channel to carry the event.

There were 708,000 viewers watching on ABC1, more than twice the numbers on either GEM (233,000), 7TWO (228,000) and way out in front of ONE (108,000) and SBS 2 (incorrectly coded as 31,000 / 45,000).

But the real battle was between two talent shows going head to head in the one timeslot. The X Factor which had audience momentum pulled 1.31m viewers while Australia’s Got Talent just cleared the magic million at 1.04m.  Nine’s Director of Television yesterday criticised Seven’s programming noting that Seven programmed their show “after they knew we were scheduling it in the slot. It’s probably not one of the greatest decisions they have ever made.” But after AGT was crushed by The Voice last year, it remains to be seen if Seven’s counter-act will go down as one of its most strategic.

Seven won the night despite GEM pulling a sizeable 9.0% share.

Seven network won Sunday with 32.4% then Nine 32.1%, ABC 16.3%, TEN 15.6% and SBS 3.7%.

Seven News was the night’s top show at 1.35m viewers then X Factor (1.31m), Sunday Night (1.08m), Bones (801,000) and Castle (539,000 / 293,000).

Nine News (1.35m) was best for Nine followed by 60 Minutes (1.16m), Australia’s Got Talent (1.04m), Underbelly: Squizzy (772,000), and The Mentalist (352,000). Nine’s schedule ran about 20 minutes late at some points.

ABC1 had a staggered schedule around the country but the preliminary numbers were ABC News (821,000), Grand Designs: Revisited (771,000), The Time of Our Lives (718,000), Leader’s Debate (708,000), ABC News Live (255,000) and The Iraq War (242,000).

MasterChef Australia (699,000) stayed as TEN’s best performer then Ripper Street (481,000), Modern Family (466,000 / 460,000), TEN News (439,000), The Simpsons (435,000) and The Graham Norton Show (263,000).

Catastrophe (251,000) led SBS ONE, World News Australia was 137,000, The Staircase was 66,000 and The Observer Effect was 63,000.

GEM’s Ashes series (504,000 / 310,000) topped multichannels.

Insiders: 183,000 / 92,000
The Bolt Report: 122,000 / 117,000

OzTAM Overnights: Sunday 11 August 2013

27 Responses

  1. Congratulations to the ABC with the Debate. Also there’s ABC News 24 that got 198,000 plus the ABC1 figure according to the multi-channel figures i.e. 906,000 total.

    OK SBS. It did occur to me that some of the yo-yoing figures could be an effect of less popular interviewees and more popular ones. Plus possibly The Ashes. Also as stated last week viewers do prefer the documentaries.

    I do think putting a documentary after The Observer Effect was an excellent idea in general. However there are human beings involved and most people have work or school or things to do on Monday. So they probably mainly want to sleep at around 10.30pm. Others 11pm and even less at 11.30pm. Sorry to state the obvious. I’ll just point out when Seven was outright number one they put Titanic on a Wednesday night. It ended near midnight. It didn’t go well.

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