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Ratings: Special Ops leaves Nine dangling

Week 32 saw two Channel Nine premieres struggling for an audience with Seven at the top of the weekly ratings rope.

Rescue SPO3The Nine Network learned some tough lessons in Week 32. Two of its bright new hopes, Rescue: Special Ops and The Farmer Wants a Wife -both of which attracted critical acclaim- took middling figures for their season premieres. Nine appears to be finding out the hard way that a disillusioned audience may not even sample new content.

Seven streaked home with 28.7% over Nine’s 23.8% and TEN’s 21.5%. The ABC had 17.1% and SBS 8.9%.

Seven won 18-49 and 25-54 demos, and was just pipped in 16-39 by 0.1% by TEN. Seven also won  Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. It tied Saturday with the ABC while Nine won Thursday. Seven again won all 5 cities.

Packed to the Rafters was the week’s top show with 1.87m viewers. Seven’s other big shows included Seven News, Dancing with the Stars, Today Tonight, Miracle Of The Hudson Plane Crash, Better Homes And Gardens, Surf Patrol, Air Ways, World’s Strictest Parents and Home and Away. If the network has any Achilles’ heel, it is Thursday night. Double Take (832,000) and TV Burp (774,000)  landed third, but this week switch slots. True Beauty (613,000) will be burnt off in double episodes this week and next. After losing a day to the Today show recently, Sunrise reaffirmed its position with several days 100,000 ahead of its rival.

Nine News (Sunday) was again best for the Nine Network with 1.51m. That left Two and a Half Men and Getaway as its only other shows with performances above 1.2m. The network’s traditional Sunday night succumbed to a battle between Seven and TEN. Regular performers 60 Minutes and Random Acts of Kindness slipped while Rescue: Special Ops had a fairly soft debut of 1.13m viewers. On Monday Farmer Wants a Wife was even lower on 1m. On Tuesday, nothing past 7:30pm could manage 1m with Gordon Ramsay all but rejected.  By Wednesday Australia’s Perfect Couple sunk to a dismal 672,000. Better news again for Hot Seat, continuing to breathe down Deal or No Deal’s neck while the AFL Footy Show remains a constant performer.

Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation was TEN’s best on 1.51m, effectively the first time the audience has “blinked” away from its 1.6m home. Also strong was Rush -now a solid performer at 1.21m. Its repeat movie The Devil Wears Prada and Eragon delivered a strong Sunday result. NCIS, The Simpsons and Good News Week were also good. A Jamie Oliver special struggled while TEN has now moved repeats of Rules of Engagement and Biggest Loser: US. Friday’s performance was dismal, just a 16% share. No sign of improvement yet for The 7PM Project‘s figures even though the show is ironing out its wrinkles. TEN News at Five continues to win its slot.

Spicks and Specks passed 1.5m for the ABC this week, giving The Librarians (1.05m) a great lead-in. Tara‘s 1.06m helped the network beat TEN for the night. Also strong were ABC News, Grand Designs, Australian Story, The New Inventors and a savage edition of Media Watch. But the ABC was also a victim of Sunday’s tussle, slipping to 11.7%. It had better results on Saturday when it tied for first with Seven.

SBS boomed to a 14.7% share on Saturday and 13.7% on Friday with 608,000 for the 2009 Ashes Series. Food Safari cooked up 456,000 on Wednesday. But Liberal Rule limped out on 191,000 -not encouraging for East West 101 soon.

Week 32

29 Responses

  1. I wonder how CH7’s follow-up to “Miracle on the Hudson Plane Crash” will rate?
    It’s titled “God screws up miracle by allowing plane/helicoptor to colloide”
    “God says D’oh”

  2. Yeah shocking about 60 minutes. Thye would have bean better off crossing to the reports talking but not talking about the story. Would have amped up the contraversy a bit and could have discussed what has happened.

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