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The Block thumps The Renovators, SBS soars with Tour de France.

Viewers flock to The Block but it's a shaky start for The Renovators. Meanwhile it's good news for Tour de France and bad news for Panic at Rock Island.

Sunday night had so many ratings stories it’s hard to know where to begin…

So let’s start at the top which was another season high for The Block.

The show pulled out 1.82m viewers, including 708,000 in its home city of Melbourne. The numbers clearly indicate its traditional timeslot is where viewers like to see the all-important room reveal. It was well ahead of Sunday Night (1.28m) and Merlin (872,000).

MasterChef Australia won its slot with a big serve of 1.74m viewers over 60 Minutes (1.26m), Grand Designs (1.04m), Great Migrations (846,000) and Cannibals of the Stone Age (176,000).

But there were big lessons at 8:30pm.

Midsomer Murders ranked first with 1.15m, followed by Bones (1.07m), The Renovators (858,000), Panic at Rock Island (596,000) and Dateline (139,000).

TEN’s new reality series lost a whopping 882,000 viewers -which won’t bode well for the rest of this week given the amount of episodes the show has. Will scheduling back to back reality shows for two full weeks ask too much of its audience?

Nine’s telemovie bombed, losing 664,000 viewers.

But there was good news for SBS as Cadel Evans’ victory ride broke records again. Tour de France averaged 704,000 viewers (for its late night broadcast) exceeded Saturday night’s 690,000. It also pushed SBS’s share into double figures for the night.

The Big Bang Theory (312,000) and Formula One (261,000) did well on multichannels.

After all was said and done, Nine won the night.

Week 31

48 Responses

  1. I much prefer The Renovators over the Block…it’s fast paced which is a refreshing change to the 100s of recaps they do over everything on The Block. The block struggles to find content – The Renovators stuggles to pick the best stuff

  2. The challenge on The Renovators last night:” Hammer this nail into that block of wood…..” Riveting challenge and suspense filled television!!! As I predicted last week this will be (and already is) a major flop……enough said……

  3. Ten have no one to blame but themselves. It’s reality overkill and naturally people aren’t going learn a whole new set of people when they’re still “dedicated” to a group they’ve watched for a few months now. They should have waited until the end of Master Chef. Instead they got greedy. I just wonder how long until this gets shafted….

  4. If the show was any good then people would have watched. 8:30pm is not a bad timeslot. Look at Downton. It easily scored 1.6m. Sorry but the show was a fizzer not the timeslot. Stop blaming the timeslot. It was the show.

  5. I had more fun with last night’s episode of The Renovators than I’ve had all year with The Block. It’s a shame many people decided not to give it a go. Hopefully word of mouth will help the show.

    Ten hasn’t really helped by airing it straight after Masterchef. They should’ve just waited a couple of weeks and let it replace the Masterchef timeslot.

  6. I really enjoyed Renovators, some of you should actually watch the flipping thing before writing it off.

    It is completely different to the Block in tone and style and I would say even the way the two networks choose their contestants is radically different (with 10 being way out infront).

    I enjoyed this more than MC last night.

  7. I agree with mike re: The Renovators – it was just too much content for 1 hour. By the end I had no idea who anybody was – at one point I wondered why one of them didn’t seem to be doing anything and realised he was a judge. Too much to keep track of. Because of that, didn’t feel a connection with any of the contestants. Prefer The Block if I was to compare…

  8. @Georgie – since when is 830pm too late when other shows regularly rate well in that time slot – ie Downton Abbey, NCIS.
    And no, not a 9 exec – since when does criticising a rubbish program make me a 9 exec?!

  9. I’m still trying to work out the maths of how many hours they worked each day to end up with 6 hours on the final day. Still don’t see how teams are picked for each reno and how you get down to one winner with so many different skills on display.

    I don’t think it will survive the next two weeks if it follows MC each night – just too much reality (and I don’t even watch the Block).

  10. Sucked in Ten, it would have been clear to anyone that there was reality/renovation show overload. How about making a good drama for a change?

    As for Nine and their telemovie, it just looked like all the typecast Underbelly actors had been put together for them to see the light before the cameras with no entertainment value there. Not surprising it came from the same people that made Scorched.

  11. No one mentioned the Best reno seriies on TV Grand Design on 2 it rated very well,
    Came home from work last night at 9.pm wife watched Grand Design, The Block, and Renovaters one after the other. enjoyed all three

  12. That’s a huge shock for the Renovators it was fabulous. Great format.

    Very sleek and in an enormous departure from the Block the competitors actually had good taste, style and the rooms actually looked great.

  13. Blah Blah Blah. Ratings Schmatings! The only ones who should care about ratings are the programmers who get paid to do just that and the exec of the prod company. The rest of you should go get a life….and a job. Preferably not in tv.

  14. @Paul, the total budget is $100k made up of a combination of cash and vouchers, the challenge wins are additional money. I think they mentioned it in the first ep, but you can see how they are going agains budget on the website by clicking on each room

  15. @veronica- i think you will find most of us are average TV watchers who can sense a turkey when we see one and also have an informed opionion – thanks very much.

  16. Does anyone actually know how much each couple on the block is given for the renovations?
    They continue to go on about running out of money.
    But neither on the site or on the show have they told us what the total budget is?

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