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Slow burn for Negus numbers

Monday night saw a modest lift for George Negus and a tumble for Eddie McGuire.

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The first evening of 6:30 with George Negus has seen the show lift from 394,000 at 6pm last Monday to 452,000 last night. But did it steal viewers from Seven and Nine?

Last Monday Today Tonight was 1.35m and last night it won the slot on 1.19m. A Current Affair held at 1.05m across both Mondays -but much is dependent on the mix of stories.

Mondays are traditionally the biggest audience for these shows. Whether Negus can improve on 452,000 this week is anybody’s guess but TEN will be hoping the show is sampled by new viewers. This will still be a slow burn.

TEN’s supersized News At Five averaged 669,000 down from 740,000 last Monday. It was still enough to claim a win over Deal or No Deal (617,000) and Hot Seat (593,000) but averaging numbers across 90 minutes will impact on its total from this point on.

#1 for the night was My Kitchen Rules at 1.38m viewers, beating Two And A Half Men (1.04m / 709,000), 7.30 / Australian Story (855,000 / 871,000), Undercover Boss (544,000), and Mythbusters (316,000).

Despite a poor lead-in The Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala won its slot with 751,000, in a close race with Conviction Kitchen (743,000), Four Corners / Media Watch ABC1 (742,000 / 654,000) and The Million Dollar Drop down to its lowest national figure so far, 570,000. Man Vs Wild was 276,000. Nine would now be better off playing Million Dollar Drop during the Easter non-ratings and salvaging what it can of this Thursday and next week.

Elsewhere last night, ABC News won at 7pm with 1.11m viewers over Home And Away (972,000) and The 7pm Project (755,000). Nine managed 849,000 for the same slot with two comedies in various cities.

Neighbours was the top multichannel show last night on 402,000.

Seven won the night.

Week 15

27 Responses

  1. I love George’s take on events and hope to catch him more in the better time of 6:30. Also daylight savings ending should help since more people will be indoors at 6:30 now that it is dark.

    As for the 90 min news, I think they need to go back to putting the comedy break in between the News and George/7PM. They don’t need to strip a single show though. Mix it up each weeknight at 6 with a different show. Unfortunately they’ve shipped anything suitable off to Eleven.

  2. I really hope Negus catches on, it is way better than the other rival programs. Last night ACA had John Burgess on welfare…and they wondered why I watched Negus instead!?

    Million Dollar flop deserves no comment.

  6. Hopefully Ten now extends the Late News back to 40/45 minutes, as it was up to this year, and reinstate Sports Tonight or news at 5:30pm weekends.

  8. Good to see some improvement for Ten and seeing Neighbours over 400k is great! Network 10 had over 850k in the 6:30pm timeslot with channels combined which is better than the same time last year when Neighbours got on the same day in 2010 of 674k. It was Easter Monday last year though.

    Seven had 2 3/4 hrs of cooking shows last night which is too much. Masterchef may be spread over the week but no more than 90 min per day. I was annoyed with Seven as I thought Brothers and Sisters was on at 9:30 or actually 9:40pm and I recorded it but missed half.

    Hopefully Ten can start winning at 6:30pm with both 10 and hopefully 11 beating the opposition!

  9. 6.30 with Negus covers too much in too short a time. The story about Libya was important enough for a whole segment but only went for two minutes; same with everything else he covered. It’s like they’re trying too hard. Better them than those other two shows, though.

  10. Nine would be unwise to show Drop over Easter because the more people see of it, the more they will dislike it. This sort of show is a 1 night wonder and it didn’t do all that well on the 1st night anyway.

  11. Yeah i guess it may be a good sign for Negus. Monday seems to be the only day of the week where ACA gets over a million viewers, the rest of the week is hangs around the 950,000 mark so as the week goes on George may get another another 100,000 viewers

    I guess the important thing is to make sure it doesn’t go backwards

  12. “Million Dollar Flop” – the people who keep writing that must be really proud of the fact they can rip off someone else’s insult from a month ago and still try to pass it off as something funny… seriously?

    No originality anymore. We get it, you dont like the show and want it to fail. No one else likes it either (I havent even watched it) but enough of the lame puns.

  13. A couple of big, newsbreaking stories would be just the ticket for 6.30 with George. Hope the program can hang in there and reach healthy figures. It’s definitely worth the work.

  15. So good to be able to watch something at 6.30 now. Love the tag line too, ‘A real alternative at 6.30’ lol. Decet enough figures, hopefully more people make the switch from TT & ACA to George Negus.

  17. Averaged across the 90 minutes, Ten News at Five didn’t do too badly really.

    Ten News at Five – 669,000
    Nine Arvo News/Hot Seat/Nine News – 679,000
    Seven 4.30 News/Deal or No Deal/Seven News – 759,000

    The 5pm news hour averaged 760,000 viewers, while the 6pm half hour averaged 498,000.

  21. David, what does a 400k for 11 represent in % just for that half hour do you know? I’d be interested to see how high a digital channel can get, at least momentarily but consistently.

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