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The Block builds to 1.44m

The Block has increased on its premiere episode, now at 1.44m. But MasterChef remained as Monday's top show.

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More good news for Nine with The Block increasing on its premiere episode that aired last week.

Last night the one hour episode pulled 1.44m viewers, up 102,000 on last week and its best audience so far. In its new home city it impressed with 556,000 viewers, far outstripping Sydney’s 371,000. It bettered Home and Away‘s first episode in Hawaii (1.01m), ABC News (909,000) and  The 7PM Project (784,000).

MasterChef Australia was the top show for the night on 1.57m viewers, over The Big Bang Theory (997,000), 7:30 / Australian Story (770,000 / 912,000), No Ordinary Family (636,000) and Mythbusters (252,000). Nine is also claiming a win in Total People for the head to head portions of The Block v MasterChef.

Despite a sluggish lead-in The Amazing Race Australia (1.07m) still won its 8:30 timeslot, racing ahead of Offspring (938,000), Rescue Special Ops (839,000), Four Corners / Media Watch (687,000 / 589,000) and Man vs Wild (210,000).

By 9:30pm CSI: Miami took first place on 675,000 over Q&A (605,000), Air Crash Investigations (441,000), and House (436,000), will the latter ever return to TEN on those numbers?

On digital channels Neighbours (431,000) and Wimbledon 2011 (404,000) did well.

Despite Nine winning the night in Primary channel shares, it was Seven that won in overall network share.

Week 27

Amended.

34 Responses

  1. @ jayjay….err ch9 have adverts don’t they?…..prime time ones, that, if I am correct, the advertisers pay a lot of money for. Then there is programme sponsership, I think advertisers also pay for those don’t they? I guess if people want to watch advertorials, they can view morning tv. I just don’t want this crap constantly rammed down my throat on an evening, and can vote with the remote….

  2. And tonight will be them running around stores for half and hour. Thankfully they put it on line so I just skip forward. You can watch a week of shows pretty quickly when you just skip the “previously” bits.

  3. how do you expect a programme like The Block to get made without product placement? The producers have addressed this in many articles and said they don’t try and hide it. They have always been upfront with the product placement.
    I often think some of you think each TV station has a money tree they can harvest whenever they like.

  4. I have never watched The Block but decided to try the current season because I thought it must have been popular for a good reason. I think I’ve made the wrong decision. So far it’s been nothing more than an extended Mitre 10 advertisement. I’ll see the week out and see if it can hold my interest.

  5. I’m with you AJ, by streching out the block over 5 nights i’m concerned they are going to fill a lot of that time with fluffy crap like the key challenge. The key to the show (no pun intended) is the renovating and the emotional strain it delivers and not silly unimportant challenges. I much prefer the previous condensed format, so i’m not sure i’ll survive to the end. I’ve given up on Masterchef for the same reason, it’s just too much for me.

  6. House has suffered the same fate as ER and many other.
    Loyal following for several season in the same time slot, then off it goes to another day and time and loses most of its support, Too late it ends up back on the same day but by then people have lost the plot (literally) and don’t go back to it.

    Its a shame, it used to be a good program but when it went to Sunday I couldn’t watch it and now ive got no idea whats going on any more so I dont bother.

    By the way, whatever happend to the last seasons of ER?

  7. @ AJ, Bacon & others

    You are all absolutley bang on. I watched this for the first time last night and ended up thinking it was crap. Music, dumb challenges, product placement really very poor. So a sense of anticipation a.k.a. Kevin Mclouds Grand Designs, just lead to deep disappointment. So here ends my viewing of the block for now.

    That said ch9 do have a track record of strong ratings with utter drivel e.g. 2½ men. So good luck to them as just a few weeks ago, they looked like they were closing down.

  8. @MuchoTB, I disargree I feel last night’s episode of TAR Aus was just as good as the early episodes in Indonesia/Hong Kong etc, from now on you will find teams will get more ruthless as the final leg nears. Plus the show has to have non elimination legs every now & then otherwise there would only be about 8 or 9 episodes in total.

    @Geoff, also on the TAR US verison in season 13 Toni & Dallas misplaced their passport and money in Russia on the penultimate leg which prevented them from cheering the final 3 teams at the finish line

  9. @ Paul & Wesley,

    In regards to Tyler & Nathan losing their passports next week on TAR:AUS I’d suspect the same thing will happen to them as Zev & Justin in the American season 15. Despite them arriving at the pitstop 1st in leg 4, Zev was missing his passport–they were told they couldn’t check in without it and had to go find it.

    As it wasn’t found in time they were eliminated, especially because the contestants would be unable to travel across multiple countries without a passport.

  10. @ wesley – Not sure how they will handle this on the Australian version but on the US TAR at least one team has been kicked off for not having passports. The rule is in place because they would be unable to leave the country without passports and getting replacements would take too long.
    Assuming the passports really are lost (which based on how misleading some of the TAR ads have been is a large assumption) it could be out of Sevens hands.

  11. We tried the first week but ditched it to wait for the ‘proper’ week to start but this was ust schmaltzy WASP couple wankery laden with OTT product placement, so we’re ditching it altogether and sticking with Masterchef.

  12. I have to agree with Bacon – the product placement was more ‘in your face’ than anything I have ever seen. Virtually every shot included a Mitre 10 logo somewhere and every branded product had to have a loving close-up accompanied by the oohs and aahs of the contestents. Pretty pathetic really.

  13. Australian Story was fantastic last night, and that is reflected in the ratings for its ep. I think last week it scored under 790k. David – I know you will have answered this previously somewhere, but how do we find out how many people watched online? Thanks mate. Love your work.

  14. Here’s hoping they bump NOF soon, TAR:Australia is a quality show and deserves a better lead-in than 600k.

    That said, it is starting to feel like they are dragging out the season. At the start of the series the challenges in Africa and Indonesia were quite exciting/interesting to watch, in contrast last night they were eating sausages, going ice skating and stacking boxes of beer in a brewery…also not a fan of non-elimination legs, it ruins the suspense of the show

  16. Did anyone else feel like there was just Too much product placement in last night’s The Block? Even their clothing is covered in brands! MasterChef are much more subtle in their placements…

  19. I’ve always been a fan of The Block, but I’ll be skipping episodes if they insist on including rubbish like the “choose a key to open a locked door” challenge on Friday’s episode and the equally rubbish scavenger hunt challenge in tonight’s episode. I watch the block for the renovations, not silly side challenges.

    Surely living in and renovating a derelict house would provide enough tension and drama to make for great entertainment? That typed, I wish they’d clarify what is happening with the extensions. Are they the participant’s responsibility or are they being constructed by builders employed by Channel 9? Surely they must be working off council plans lodged by Channel 9 many months ago?

  20. Next week on The Amazing Race Australia, Nathan & Tyler get their passport stolen on a train, I wonder if they can continue on the race because you need your passport to travel to another country.

  21. I can’t see Seven tolerating those numbers for NOF much longer given it’s starting to hurt TAR:A slightly. Also just wondering if Nine would’ve been better off stripping The Block from 7.30pm Mon-Thurs instead of it’s current format. It might have come close to 1.6 million if it was on from 7.30-8.30pm last night.

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