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Australia goes down, but Nine scores with Rugby World Cup.

Australia lost but Nine won with their coverage of the Rugby World Cup, giving the network a strong performance across Sunday.

Nine’s coverage of the Rugby World Cup semi-final between Australia and New Zealand paid off handsomely with 1.78m viewers last night. As the #1 show for Sunday it pulled its biggest audience in Sydney where 710,000 watched NZ beat Australia 20-6. Last night on Twitter there was plenty of criticism of Ray Hadley’s calling of the game.

It was a big weekend of sport. The Trans-Tasman Rugby League Test pulled up 943,000 viewers, and Casey Stoner’s win at 2011 MotoGP: Phillip Island attracting 317,000 on TEN. The FIA Formula One World Championship on ONE was the top stand-alone programme on multichannels with 370,000 viewers.

Together with the annual Telethon (212,000) in Perth, it’s hard to measure head to head results from Sunday.

But in entertainment choices Underbelly: Razor (1.33m) did well for Nine. Person Of Interest followed on 670,000.

Wild Boys was 997,000 for Seven with Sunday Night, not screening in Perth, on 956,000. Bones settled for third place with 774,000 and Castle was 624,000.

Junior Masterchef was TEN’s strongest on 872,000, followed by a disappointing script in Terra Nova (827,000). Against tough competition Merlin had to settle for 624,000 viewers. But Ringer rang out to just 359,000 viewers.

The excellent Wide Open Road (774,000) on ABC1 also had a tough contest, while The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency was 727,000. Grumpy Guide To… pulled 454,000.

Best for SBS was The Destiny Of Rome on 219,000.

Nine easily won the first night of the week.

Week 43

25 Responses

  1. At the start I managed to flip back and forth 9/GEM and Fox Sports. When I found out that 9/GEM had poor audio, I stuck with Fox Sports which showed it live and uninterrupted minus Ray Warren.

  2. Does anyone know if the Wallabies Bronze Medal match will be screened on Channel 9 (the primary channel) as well as the GEM channel? I ask this as I will be in a place this Friday night which doesn`t get good digital TV reception and as far as I know has no access to Foxtel…..

  3. Why would anyone watch Rugby World Cup (or anything for that matter) on 9/Gem when it’s in High Def on Fox Sports? Even the picture quality on Gem was poor.

    The guys on Fox Sports treat Union properly over the whole year, not just cherry pick a few world cup games that 9 think might rate. The same goes for a whole raft of sports – Fox Sports really do an excellent job.

  4. @Blogger, our household too was in peals of laughter over those gems. Absolutely amateurish calling of the match. I was in my car the day before and listened to ABC radio calling the Wales-France match – that’s how to do it!

    Besides, did Nine think they could just drop an NRL caller into a world class Union match and nobody would notice?? Horrible!

  5. Didnt watch the match last night or more to the point coudnt tv wasnt working but i listend to it on ABC radio, not a bad match. I cant comment on the commentary from Ray Hadley, but the abc commentators were not bad, still prefer Gordon Bray although he would have been calling for ESPN. Over a million is pretty good considering NIne dillydalied and toyed with the product.

  6. Hadley’s commentary was rightly derided. It was an absolute joke. I turned the sound off it was that awful.

    The last 10 or 15 minutes of Terra Nova was amateur sh!t and I assume the rest was too. Ringer was just stupid. I thought that the cheap and nasty green-screen boat scene would be an aberration due to having to shoot the scene at short notice or something, but it’s indicative of the quality of the writing and the whole show in general. I don’t care where Ten move it next week as I prob won’t be watching.

  7. I watched Fox Sports. Nines sporting coverage is a disgrace. Have a bet here and have a bet there during the rugby league made me switch off 20 minutes in. It’s absolutely disgusting. It’s good ratings though

  8. All I can say is thank christ I have Foxtel. Greg Clark is a great commentator so I didn’t have to sit through Ray Hadley phoning it in. Also why was the commentary audio so bad on Nine’s coverage.

  9. sunday night was ordinary. they flogged a story of an afl player that bet on his team the would rock the sport. all it was. was just a bloke trying to get sympathy. typical 7 advertising

  10. Hadley was calling the game as if it was on radio – mate, I can see the damn pictures.
    He also didn’t even take the time to learn the names of the NZ team, appalling.

    And to the rest of the comedy team? thanks for these gems:

    “I’d like to turn it into Quantum Physics, but I can’t”
    “That kick was right over the black dot. Except the black dot isn’t there, it’s all white”

    and who could forget:

    “Rugby is all about contest.” well duh!

  11. Someone should have told Ray Hadley that he was calling on television and not radio, sounded terrible. Not to mention his inability to name many of the players. I guess that’s what you get when you employ a leauge commentator for a Rugy match.

  12. David – do those numbers include the NZ, SAF and UK figures? Because, you know, thats relevant! (sarcasm)

    I kid – although its a shame only a few of you will understand the joke.

  13. Once upon a time this kind of opening night lead for 9 was unassailable, but by Wednesday morning 7 will be back on top. A one off bonus of a Rugby match won’t do it for 9.

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