★★★★★ 0/5

Howzat! bowls 2.1m. But Everybody Dance now beaten by SBS.

Ratings: Nine's miniseries pulls the biggest local drama audience of the year, while TEN's dance show is beaten by a doco on SBS.

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It was billed as the drama event of the year and on total people numbers, Howzat: Kerry Packer’s War surely delivered, with an outstanding 2.1m viewers last night.

It is the highest-rated audience for a local drama for 2012.

The Nine drama was trending globally last night as Twitter lit up with glowing praise for the mini-series, and especially Lachy Hulme’s performance.

But the bad news continued for TEN’s Everybody Dance Now -now fifth in its timeslot on 385,000, beaten by SBS.

Nine easily won the night with a huge 38.0% share to Seven 25.5%, TEN 15.9%, ABC 15.0% and SBS 5.6%.

Nine won all but the 6pm timeslot, with 60 Minutes on 1.51m, then Nine News (1.4m), Big Brother (1.36m) and The Mentalist (510,000).

Seven News (1.51m) was best for Seven then Sunday Night (1.29m), Kath & Kim (909,000) and Criminal Minds (629,000 / 497,000).

TEN had decent numbers for its MasterChef finale (winner announced 1.05m, finale 802,000) but that’s where the good news ended. TEN News was 477,000. Everybody Dance Now fell to 385,000 losing 665,000 from its lead in, fifth in its slot. The Project was 334,000 and Movie: The A Team was 310,000.

ABC News was 822,000 for ABC1 then Grand Designs Revisited (809,000), Dream Build (744,000), Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple (670,000), Compass (352,000), Inspector George Gently (315,000) and Antiques Master (229,000).

Despite heated competition SBS did well with Pompeii: Cellar of Skeletons (427,000), then World News Australia (229,00), Inside Nature’s Giants (182,000) and Capitalism: A Love Story (141,000).

Big Brother on GO! managed to top multichannels but only with 233,000.

Sunday 19 August 2012

46 Responses

  2. I did not watch Howzat, but catch up with it on Sat or online. As for ch10 ….well…that is their major show stuffed for the second half of the year a bit like renovators last year. Fta networks simply can not afford to have such major failures……ch10 are in a bad place

  3. I’m not remotely interested in cricket, but Howzat! had me completely enthralled. A fantastic ensemble cast – Lachy Hume’s Kerry Packer, in particular, was just awesomw!
    I can’t wait for part 2!

  4. Many younger viewers might not know that Kerry Packer actually tried to get TV advertising deregulated in the early 1990s so that TV stations could show unlimited ads. When a scandal erupted one of the TV bosses said that if people didn’t like it “they can just switch off”. Prime Minister Paul Keating intervened and the limits on TV ads stayed.

  5. I watched Everybody Dance Now last night to see what the changes were and aside from shortening the show and removing some of the judges explaining why their act should win, it was the same show. There still is no excitement factor when it comes to audience voting. It’s more like a political debate than an exciting dance show. Sorry Sarah but your delivery is bland.

  6. As a young boy when World Series Cricket was beginning, I had no idea as to the machinations that made it happen and particularly the people. Howzat has really opened my eyes and so far the story has me hook line and sinker. Lachy Hulme and the rest of the cast are truly fantastic; I’m really looking forward to Sunday night. If channel nine stuck to making shows for adults, they’d be on a winner in my view.

  7. I pretty sure Revenge was the highest rating drama of the year. But I think this would be this highest Australian one. Great ratings. Good to see Australians watching drama series not silly realitive TV

  8. 9 ads. I noticed on FB someone said they did an ad count during Howzat. 5min show…3 min ads…repeat and repeat. Seems Howzat had enough going for it for the ad saturation not to have bothered too many people but the ads seem to be a real downfall for 9. May be money making but generally such high levels prevent audience engagement and the products being advertised wind up being seen as negative. Someone reminded recently about the Keating era and him proposing 4 ad breaks per hour show. I’m not au fait enough with the history of ads vs TV program time and if there is any current ‘accepted level’? David?

  10. I didnt watch Howzat, I’m not a cricket fan so didn’t bother watching. I might give it a try if it is repeated this week.
    I am shocked at the high rating for Kath and Kim… Were people confused and thought thay they were going to be new episodes? I wonder how it will go next week.
    Big Brother rise is good for Nine, they must be happy with that.
    An TEN, what an embarrassment to be beaten by SBS! (Not that SBS is bad, its just limited appeal). EDN will have to be cancelled or moved to 6.30pm. I am sure that after this, trying to import US singers/dancers as judges may get a little more difficult. I still don’t understand why we needed US judges? SYTYCD went fine without imports, even with the screeching of Nat Bass yelling everything throughout the series.

  11. Interesting that most of the comments on this page aren’t about Howzat. I so wanted to love it but found myself wondering why I was still watching and switched off half an hour before the end. I did enjoy seeing which actors were cast as the cricket greats. The acting was good, the production values were good but there was no emotional hook for me. Did I care about Kerry Packer – nope. Had we seen his passion for cricket and not just his desire to gain the television rights right from the start maybe I would have cared. Obviously, I’m on my own here. The highest rating drama of the year, go figure?

    1. My review did question whether we cared too, but that came for me about halfway through when he spoke about his father’s love of cricket. Finally I could connect with him as a central character. But it was still a solid performance and very well produced.

  12. Many Howzat fans are asking why they have to wait a week to see part 2. They feel the second part should have been shown tonight. First positive for 9 in a while. Obviously great with from production team and writers. 60mins was drab and I agree with NathanL about the dumbing down of news. I think news.com.au as former online news course is a hair away from becoming an aussie TMZ – but with less celeb clout.

  13. Congrats to Nine on the ratings last night. I also was however astounded at the content in 60 Minutes. For a flagship news and current affairs program to be showing a story on a man living with clutter and an interview with JLo is ridiculous. With all that’s going on in the world, the dumbing down of our news in this country is very worrying.

  16. I noted, again, that ABC1 beat TEN, but missed that SBS had beaten TEN’s EDN. What a disaster. I thought Sarah’s spray in Lachlan’s Sunday Tele was hilarious. Not even a free page 5 spread in the family Sunday rag helped. Quite the opposite.
    The hilarious part was that my teens didn’t know no one was watching it and it was actually as bad as Sarah was talking it down to be – not that they had been watching it. There was very little “dancing”. More acrobatics and gymnastics. Weird. And we really do still need US “judges”.

    1. The question now is what can TEN replace EDN with for Sunday night? I don’t think there is much in the closet that fits a PG timeslot. Double Last Man Standing at 6:30 and double Modern Family at 7:30? Or repeat an episode of Don’t Tell the Bride / IWS? Either way it’s problematic.

  19. I’m actually more surprised by 60 minutes. I caught the intro and that was enough

    Interview with J.Lo and the story of the man living with clutter was enough to win that time slot *shakes head*

  21. Wow. Everybody Dance Now is gonna get the axe this week!

    Decent numbers for Big Brother – I really enjoyed the secrets revealed episode. They’re not big, dark secrets, which is good – keeps it light & entertaining!

    Will be interesting to see how BB fairs tonight against X Factor.

    Loved Howzat!

  22. I only saw the intro to EDN last night but it was clear all three presenters were doing their damn hardest to work it and I suspect they may have recieved some ‘special juice’ from Honey Boo Boo’s bot bot but it wasn’t enough to make me want to watch this show.

  23. EDN will either be immediately axed or consigned for the remainder of its run to a secondary channel.yanked for sure. It can’t survive in a prime time slot on those numbers. The idea was good but the format and delivery was a dud.

  24. I watched EDN last night and didn’t mind it…but beaten by SBS, I highly doubt it will still be on air next week. There’s no way you can spin those ratings positively…

    I’m happy to see Criminal Minds drop, worst show on air IMO. Flipping channels I saw one scene where there were severed arms and legs everywhere and they were talking about how the “unsub” was sexually aroused by fires/tornadoes/natural disasters…not my idea of good entertainment

  25. I wonder if Nine are concerned for the low numbers for the Big Brother Daily Show on GO! Sure it lead multi channels, but 233k is still a low number.

    Nine may think about having a 90 minute episode at 6:30pm and then showing 60 minutes at 8pm.

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