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The Project strong as Charlie says goodbye

Ratings: The Project and TEN News enjoy a lift in figures but the night goes to Seven.

2014-04-08_1005_001Charlie Pickering’s final episode of The Project pulled good numbers for TEN last night with the second half hour 774,000 in overnight split-coded numbers, a marked increase on its usual figures. The first half was 474,000.

On the night when Media Watch weighed in to the state of the network, TEN’s footage of Renae Lawrence discussing Schapelle Corby also lifted TEN Eyewitness News to 768,000, its best numbers this year. Her statements have since attracted media headlines.

However for TEN the traction did not translate to a bumper finale for Secrets and Lies, which contrasts with the strong figures for Love Child‘s season final.

Regardless, it was actually the Seven network that took the night with a network share of 32.0% then Nine 31.7%, ABC 17.2%, TEN 14.9% and SBS 4.3%.

My Kitchen Rules was #1 at 1.63m for Seven then Seven News (1.3m / 1.16m), Home and Away (964,000), Revenge (807,000), Million Dollar Minute (595,000), How I Met Your Mother (432,000 / 224,000).

The Block pulled 1.49m for its penultimate episode for Nine then Nine News (1.3m / 1.19m), Love Child‘s season finale was 1.23m, ACA (1.05m), and Hot Seat (676,000). Footy Classified was 276,000 in 3 cities.

ABC News (892,000) topped ABC1 followed by Australian Story (863,000), 7:30 (715,000), Four Corners (659,000), Media Watch (638,000). Q & A‘s China episode dropped to 425,000.

The Project ran overtime but other overnight numbers for TEN were Modern Family (673,000 / 319,000), Bondi Rescue (467,000), The Bold and the Beautiful (451,000), Secrets and Lies (409,000) and Blue Bloods (274,000).

On SBS ONE it was Vikings (238,000), Mythbusters and SBS World News (both 152,000) and RocKwiz (133,000).

Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom again topped multichannels at 299,000.

Sunrise: 358,000
Today: 324,000
ABC News Breakfast: 83,000 / 55,000
Wake Up: 37,000

OzTAM Overnights: Monday 7 April 2014

23 Responses

  1. i also wondered how the Project would survive without Charlie but really enjoyed watching Will Anderson & he seems to fit well with the others, not much of a Peter Helliar fan so having Will compensates, is he confirmed as a perminent host?

  2. @ Secret Squirrel

    Re: Secrets and Lies.

    Wouldn’t there be that thing called lack of decent ratings? Although Ten is in real trouble. Which is the real problem. Maybe next year they can try to launch early. Don’t know if it’ll work.

    I will admit I watched most but not all of the first episode in a repeat. Luckily the computer graphics didn’t put me off. But it just seemed to meander. So I wasn’t interested. Also I’m more interested in Eleven shows on Monday. Unless they mess up badly there then I’ll stick with that. It isn’t impossible for that to happen.

  3. A lot of people that didn’t seem to think much of Secrets and Lies nonetheless seem to have managed to force themselves to watch the whole series. Kinda belies any calls for it to have had better writing, acting, directing,…

  4. Secrets & Lies end was so laughably bad. We were actually cringing watching it.
    The writers obviously thought it would be a cool twist of an ending for *them* to be the killer. So they tried to make everything fit around that, when it really didn’t at all. The *killer* had zero motive, so it just felt forced and unbelievable.
    (And the terrible acting didn’t help things either.)

  5. Thanks David.

    Am enjoying how Louis Theroux finishes on ABC2 and then you can go right into Mediawatch on ABC1.

    That’s what I call programming.

  6. “Still wondering why the police seemed so absolutely focussed on as their main suspect all the way through.”
    Meant to say Ben Gunderlach….

  7. Stuck with S&L to confirm if the killer was who I thought it was from fairly early on.
    Turned out it was ….I just wasn’t sure of their exact motive.
    Overall not a bad series but ,as others have commented, it was no Broadchurch and the plot was too thin to sustain sustain 6 eps.
    Still wondering why the police seemed so absolutely focussed on as their main suspect all the way through.

  8. There were lots of problems with Secrets & Lies, the main one being that many of the clues were delivered on-line, which divorced them from the story. I don’t think the target audience (middle-aged people) are the type who hop onto the net to chase up a TV show.

    Clues in a murder mystery need to provoke reactions among the characters. In S&L Ben just kept randomly stumbling on conveniently-placed clues. And then the clues didn’t really do anything. That’s what gave the show its thin feel. If you look at the clues on Broadchurch, they created a domino effect and sparked off complex plot points.

    My other problem was the lack of something called ‘fair play’. The audience is supposed to get the same clues at the same time as the characters, which allows the audience to play ‘who can catch the killer first – me or the sleuth’.

    And some of the acting was seriously hammy.

  9. I watched all of S&L and apart from epsiode 1 I thought it was a really ordinary plot that belied belief. I am glad that it was produced because I love having our own shows but for an 8 parter it should have been much tighter.
    I guess I was expecting the quality of Broadchurch.

  10. to the 2 million viewers who decided to not watch Secrets and Lies…

    you have no taste in television, the finale did pull the best numbers all season. but what you didn’t see was the end. What a twist! And if you look at the online extras, there is cause for a possible second season (which probably won’t happen, thank you programming boffins at Ch. Kochie and Ch. Eddie). If they encore the series later in the year, it might pull enough numbers to warrant another season…but with the rating problems at Ch. Rove (yes, technically he still has a presence) and a Media Watch feature. Chances of that are Unlikely to Zilch at best.

    nb: i have refrained from revealing what happens at the end. all the episodes are online, plus all the clues.

  11. S&L had (just) the best numbers of the 6 episodes. The last webisode suggested a storyline for a season 2, but with these ratings seems like a toss up.

  12. Nine beat Seven by 1%, but 7Mate got the Seven network over the line.

    Nine seem to have stopped buying content for Go! and Gem entirely relying on repeats of the TBBT (working) and lifestyle junk (not working).

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