Olympics light up Seven’s sky

It was the week Beijing welcomed the world as Nine was banned from official venues, Hole took on Supermodel, FOX acquired the rights to an Aussie telemovie, Eddie McGuire joked that he should have won “four or five” Gold Logies, a politician distanced her personal struggles from the comments of Sam Newman, SBS consulted the community on its future, ACMA ruled against a Seven sitcom, Sunrise watered down rumours of a host rift, community television closed its doors after 9 years in Perth, and Sunday ended after 27 years with a former presenter dubbing it a “dopey” decision.

And it was the first of several anticipated Olympic glories for Seven. Bolstered by Friday and Saturday performances, Seven shot to a 34.8% share over Nine’s 24.8% and TEN’s 18.4%. The ABC had 16.7% and SBS 5.3%. Seven won all cities and all nights except Sunday and Wednesday which fell to Nine.

Top show for the week was of course the Olympics Opening Ceremony with 3.3m viewers. The Olympics will qualify as official ratings weeks, but when yearly overviews are tallied will be ‘put aside’ by industry and advertisers as an abnormal event. Tradition is to calculate the year minus events such as Olympics / Commonwealth Games because they do not give advertisers a consistent snapshot of network performance. For Seven to truly win the year it will need to extract the Olympic weeks.

The Opening Ceremony delivered a staggering 3.3m viewers, the biggest audience all year, and topping Athens’ games. The numbers were so impressive it arguably could have run repeats all week and still won the week (on Monday night it did, for City Homicide). The Saturday morning repeat took 759,000. For the first day of competition Seven took 2.2m for Beijing primetime, 1.7m for fringe (5-6pm), and 1.2m for afternoon. Aside from sport it was Saturday News (2.2m), the finale for The One (1.5m), Border Security, The Force, Today Tonight, Battle of the Choirs, City Homicide, Home and Away, Criminal Minds and All Saints that performed. But the two debuts of Make Me a Supermodel fell short of expectations (1.18 / 1.04m). It was thumped by Hole in the Wall. No doubt Seven will be hoping Games cross-promo and the auditions over will see the show rise.

Nine was not without some significant achievements in the pre-Games warm up week. 60 Minutes (1.75m) was its best but there were smiles for some newer products. The finale of Farmer Wants a Wife took a huge 1.7m, enough to greenlight a third series. Yet it was the debut of Hole in the Wall that had everybody nervous. Buoyed by a big lead from Two and a Half Men, the wacky game show burst in with 1.55m. Other strong showings came from Animal Emergency, Wipeout, Nine News, A Current Affair and Getaway. The last, melancholy edition of Sunday was beaten, taking only 158,000 viewers, trailing Weekend Sunrise.

TEN’s week was dreadful, barely having a show scrape into the top 40 shows of the week: NCIS (1.11m). There was better news for Rove (1.094m), and next for the network were Thank God You’re Here, So You Think You Can Dance, The Simpsons, Law & Order: SVU, Law & Order: CI. Monday night was again too low, despite Good News Week at 875,000. There were problems with Burn Notice, Mark Loves Sharon and America’s Next Top Model.

Spicks and Specks returned to #1 for the ABC at 1.37m, and Foyle’s War, ABC News, The New Inventors, Doctor Who, Family Fortunes, Grand Designs, Jack the Ripper and 7:30 Report were all strong.

Top Gear took an outstanding 1.04m for SBS but Saturday was its biggest night with an 8% share.

Week 32