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60 Minutes claiming current affairs crown

60 Minutes says it has finished the year as #1 News and Current Affairs show -but there are a few qualifications to add.

2014-11-04_1228Nine’s 60 Minutes has sent a release claiming it has finished the year as Australia’s Number One News and Current Affairs show for the second year running.

With cricket set to return to Sundays from next weekend, the show is now over for the ratings year, but begins a summer season on November 30.

Nine has sent through some averages for the 5 city metro:
60 Minutes – 1,244,000 viewers
Sunday Night – 1,164,000 viewers
Australian Story – 838,000 viewers
4 Corners – 674,000 viewers
Foreign Correspondent – 588,000 viewers
Insight – 231,000 viewers
Dateline – 149,000 viewers

Executive Producer, Tom Malone said, “We are truly humbled by this result. The ratings victory is a great recognition for our terrific team of reporters, producers, crews, editors, and the entire 60 Minutes staff. For the viewers to return each week to watch our programme is very rewarding.

“We treasure the trust and loyalty that people show in us. Along with our ratings success, the team has been recognised by our peers with two Walkley Award nominations in 2014.

“We’re very grateful to David Gyngell and Darren Wick for the support and faith they show in 60 Minutes, and we’ll be back with more terrific stories in 2015.”

However there are some qualifications it overlooked, firstly that the numbers do not include Nine’s own A Current Affair, ABC’s 7:30 nor Today Tonight which continues in Adelaide and Perth. That said, 60 Minutes would average higher than all, given they are daily rather than weekly shows.

The shows are also not head to head. Dateline airs at 9:30 on a Tuesday night, not exactly a level playing field against a 7:30 Sunday show.

Not even 60 Minutes and Sunday Night spent the year head to head. Seven’s show moved from 6:30 to post 9pm starts depending on the schedule. Nine similarly moved 60 Minutes to a 9:15pm start on 3 weeks, which it strategically coded as “60 Minutes Late” with OzTAM. As a result the average of 1,244,000 viewers does not include those 3 episodes, because it would have averaged lower.

Malone tells TV Tonight, “During those 3 weeks, we still averaged 992,000 per episode between 9:15 and 10:15pm, and drew 1-1 in the 2 weeks we were head to head with Sunday Night.”

4 Responses

  1. Agree mavmedia think that Sunday Night looks better and the cameramen are much more professional, also as Sunday Night has a break for much longer than 60 Minutes during the year Its understandable that people see more of that if there is no competition, and channel 9 are all repeats in one way or another, its the only way they survive apart from sport, such a shame they rely so much on repeats to say that at one time it was the number one channel without these.

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