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Top Gear gets a lesson in the power of Over 55s

Ratings: If you've ever wondered about the power of women and older viewers look no further than Thursday's ratings results.

2013-04-12_0957If you’ve ever wondered about the power of women and older viewers look no further than Thursday’s Top Gear ratings.

It’s a timely reminder that you can top all three key demos and still end up #9 for the night in total people.

Top Gear finished with 927,000 viewers overall.

But despite topping the advertiser-friendly demos 16-39, 18-49 and 25-54 it was down in those other demos that rarely get talked about. With Women 35+Top Gear was #17, with People 55+ it was #20 and with Grocery Buyers it was #13+. Pulled down by these three groupings, Top Gear had to settle for #9 overall despite being #1 in the demos that supposedly matter.

Go figure.

Seven won the night with a network share was 29.8% then Nine 28.1%, ABC and TEN again tied with 18.2% and SBS was 5.7%.

Seven News was 1.18m for Seven then Mrs. Brown’s Boys (1.04m / 920,000 / 594,000), Today Tonight (981,000), Home and Away (943,000), Border Security: International (927,000), and Deal or No Deal (594,000).

Nine News led the night with 1.23m for Nine then A Current Affair (1.03m), Top Gear (927,000), The Footy Show (796,000) and Hot Seat (655,000).

ABC News (931,000) again topped ABC1 followed by 7:30 (834,000), The Checkout (752,000) and Orbit: Earth’s Extraordinary Journey (616,000).

TEN News was best for TEN on 621,000. Law & Order: SVU was 621,000 / 484,000, The Project was 573,000, Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals was 524,000 / 482,000 and The Simpsons was 329,000.

SBS ONE had a good night with Food Safari (356,000), Gourmet Farmer (354,000), then World News Australia (186,000), 24 Hours in Emergency (167,000) and Marco Pierre White’s Kitchen Wars (145,000).

Neighbours again topped multichannels with 285,000.

Today: 378,000
Sunrise: 352,000
ABC News Breakfast: 62,000 / 27,000

OzTAM Overnights: Thursday 11 April 2013

9 Responses

  1. Well clearly Nine have deliberately sabotaged Top Gear anyway and all the die hard fans would have already watched it, but still surprising it pulled quite a few viewers.

    And sure it dosen’t rate well for females over 35 or over 55 but why would you expect it to do so? Are women >35yo the only people whom have discretionary income in Australia now? Did I miss the memo?

  2. As with many of Nines ventures such as Top Gear and the recent Olympics, just to cite two of several examples, where Nine seem to have perfected the art of disappointing viewers expectations, or even virtually alienating loyal longtime viewers of Top Gear ( ex SBS that is).

    Viewers will only cop just so much, and attitudes will and have changed, because of what and how Nine has dished up with their Australian Top Gear franchise.

  3. Don’t care about Top Gear … surprised they have so many viewers … the hosts always seem to be having more fun than the viewers (similar to the Gap Year series) …

    The Checkout was funny and informative … milk wars indeed

  4. The networks want to win the overall viewers to set a base rate. But they get a premium from advertisers for the younger demographics.

    Channel 10 used to make the most money of all the networks when it won the 16-39s cleary but ran third over all.

    Nine will be very happy with 927k skewing young.

    New Tricks, when the ABC was showing it on Friday and Saturday evenings, used to rate over 1m but nearly 80% of the viewers were over 55 so it was of no interest to the commercial networks.

    In the US things are even more skewed towards youth demographics and shows live or die by their 18-49 figures.

  5. Biggest loser weigh in’s should be Thursday night they would smash it! Eeryone loves to see how much weight they have lost even if they watch the challenges etc

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