★★★★★ 0/5

ABC wins election night audience

ABC has repeated its 2010 success as the preferred network on election night, followed by Nine.

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elec6More Australians turned to the ABC on Election Night, as networks served up marathon broadcasts of the night the government changed hands.

Nine polled second on Free to Air, followed by Seven, TEN and SBS.

In looking at the numbers, it’s important to remember not all broadcasts were head to head, and some ran over their scheduled time. Multichannel broadcasts were also in effect for some networks.

In Preliminary metro figures, ABC1 pulled 631,000 viewers from 6-10pm, but ABC News 24 had another 338,000, giving them a combined average of 969,000. ABC advises the figure climbs to an average of 1.5m including regional viewers.

Nine had the biggest audience on any single channel, averaging 672,000 metro viewers from 6:30 – 10pm (it actually ran until 11pm, meaning it will probably drop slightly).

Seven’s broadcast included 7TWO in Melbourne and Adelaide due to AFL commitments. Its broadcast until 11pm averaged 341,000 metro viewers (Seven) + 84,000 (7TWO), totalling 425,000 metro viewers.

TEN’s broadcast averaged 306,000 metro viewers, not a great result.

SBS had an embarrassing 37,000 metro viewers.

ABC’s success repeats its 2010 win as preferred election night broadcaster. Across the 2013 campaign, ABC Online had over 60 million visits with more than 2.7 million plays of video and audio. Their Vote Compass had more than 1.3 million responses.

Figures for SKY News were not available at the time of writing.

8 Responses

  1. I too was riveted with the ABC coverage, Stephen was thoughtful as usual, and it was so nice to have more measured and balanced comments from Arthur compared to Julie. However the coverage of WA’s election results was woeful, very disappointing finish

  2. I thought Ten’s coverage was great! I was glued to my TV the whole time (though I went to News 24 in the ads, haha). Their low numbers are probably due to the young target audience not being home on a Saturday night or maybe not being *that* into politics.

  3. OK ABC News tonight did it again. They played the former The 7.30 Report’s footage before they played it on the actual show. I just want to explain why I don’t like it. Mainly because it smacks of some form of underhand advertisement. Or from a certain point of view that the News is stealing footage from the show even if it is attributing it. So doesn’t come across as entirely ethical.

    I’m assuming they can’t wait 24 hours to do the News story. So my idea although it might not be liked. Why not co-share credit? So when part of an interview shows up beforehand on the News. Because the News aired it first it gets credit for the story and footage. Due to it being first. However when it shows up on the former The 7.30 Report it gets full credit including in the future for the full interview. That way it doesn’t seem as underhanded anymore.

  4. I love the wrap up David. Thank you. As I’ve said before the ABC was excellent from what I saw. Even with gremlins. But they coped as best they could.

    I will admit I was too chicken to watch Lateline tonight after midnight due to what occurred last week. I’ll just say I don’t want to give it up. I remember watching it September 11 in 2001. By then it was a habit. Because I went out that day and didn’t get back until later. I chose Lateline over Ten Late News. As it was an ingrained habit. Although I did flick over to catch the end of the News. It didn’t end for days. I had to sleep eventually. I’ll just add I don’t want to give up Lateline. Particularly after midnight. I’ve loved the stability of it so much.

  6. Figures for Tens coverage ordinary but not totally unexpected. But good on them for covering the election, they want to create a news image for themselves ahead of the launch of Wake Up and their two morning news bulletins.
    Too bad Ten hadn’t kept Paul Henry, he would have been an ideal pinnacle for their Election coverage, given he was once a politician himself, be that though in New Zealand.
    They should have had a panel with Henry, Paul Bongiorno, Hugh Riminton and perhaps even John Howard.

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