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Tara Brown interview gets nation talking

Ratings: Forget about reality battles, Sunday was all about that 60 Minutes interview.

60mTIt may have been a big night for Reality television, but it’s hard to look past Tara Brown’s compelling interview with the Australian parents of ‘baby Gammy’ on 60 Minutes.

The hour long interview was uncomfortable viewing with Brown not letting the pair off easily. In the news landscape it was certainly a ‘good get’ for 60 Minutes and social media and press have responded accordingly.

As ratings go, it scored well for a 9:10pm show with a million viewers, it’s just a shame it wasn’t scheduled off the back of The Block, with The Voice: Kids finale in the way.

Nine and Seven both scored 30.1%, although Seven’s share was bolstered by its multichannel performance. ABC came third with 18.9%, then TEN 15.5% and SBS 5.4%.

The Block was the night’s top show at a season best 1.5m viewers. It toppled Seven’s lengthy live X Factor. Next for Nine was 1.23m, 60 Minutes (1.02m), The Voice: Kids (938,000 / 896,000) and The Mentalist (372,000).

Seven News (1.22m) led for Seven then The X Factor (1.15m), Highway Patrol (642,000) and Castle (410,000 / 276,000).

ANZAC Girls got off to a great start for ABC at 1.06m viewers -second in its timeslot- then Grand Designs Revisited (993,000), ABC News (809,000), Midsomer Murders (412,000), Compass (393,000) and The Tunnel (386,000).

TEN had a tough night with minimal premiere content (how is this possible for a prime Sunday evening?). Modern Family (547,000 / 430,000) was best then two first-run episodes being TEN Eyewitness News (461,000) and Bondi Vet (427,000). A Movie: Little Fockers repeat was 347,000 and Bondi Rescue was 288,000.

On SBS ONE it was Alexander’s Lost World (243,000), Marlon Brando: An Actor Named Desire (234,000) and SBS World News (183,000).

ABC2’s Thomas and Friends (311,000) topped multichannels.

OzTAM Overnights: Sunday 10 August 2014.

18 Responses

  1. @David and Scruffy: 7 News and Sunrise sent out posts on Facebook inviting people to watch highlights of the interview. They had zoomed in to remove most of the Nine and 60 Minutes watermarks and overlaid a 7 News logo in the bottom right corner.

  2. @David Knox
    Yahoo!7 reports on interview with Farnells, but can’t bring itself to say the words “60 Minutes” only referring to it as “television interview.”

    The same can be said of The Commonwealth Games. Yahoo7 had virtually no reports about it during the entire games, it was as if they weren’t even happening. Yet if 7 were broadcasting it the site would have been plastered wall to wall with aussies showing off their gold medals.

  3. Tara Brown should be commended – her interview was fantastic!

    Those excuses for parents just dug that hole deeper and deeper – not once did they call that poor little sweetheart ‘Our son’, it was only ”the little boy”.

  4. Brilliant work by Tara Brown, one of the most underrated journalists in Australia.

    What on Earth are Ten doing? They have zero forward thinking. Masterchef ends and the only new content they have for the 7:30pm timeslot is The Bachelor two nights a week. Where’s Recipes to Riches? They could have filmed another season of Wanted to fill some gaps at 8:30pm. All the momentum Ten got from Masterchef and Offspring has been blown due to inept management.

  5. TEN should bring back Young Talent Time. The thing it lacked on the last reboot was drama. Really rework it to suit todays market. Idol and others come with huge licensing fees and production costs makes it hard to make a dollar. YTT has brand recognition and just needs a smart rework. And its Aussie.

  6. strayamate – I did almost exactly the same as you last night.

    Watched repeats of Simpsons and Futurama on 11, switched to Ten for repeats of Modern Family and then stayed for the repeat of Little Fockers and hung around for The Art of Getting By. Was the Art the only thing on Ten last night that wasn’t a repeat?

    Very lazy programming by Ten and quite insulting to viewers and Ten shareholders actually.

    Is Ten management proud of being fourth all the time?

  7. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with X Factor in the coming weeks. No doubt the ratings will go up as the episodes get shorter, but it’s still a disappointing start.

    IMO it could be worth considering a move back to a Monday/Tuesday schedule next year and a complete rethink of Sundays (that applies across the whole year, including MKR and HR).

  8. I was on Ten last night.

    Watching the Eyewitness News (I love Natarsha Belling – But also Munro does a good job). After that I couldn’t be stuffed with Bondi Rescue & Bondi Vet, so I switched over to 11 and watched the Simpsons and Futurama.

    Then back to Ten for double Modern Family. Then back to 11 for Galaxy Quest, And finally back to Ten for The Art of Getting By (which I actually enjoyed). And the start of 48 Hours.

  9. X-Factor is really struggling. Those numbers are so poor! The entire music show category is fatigued. However, I must say..X-Factor is the best produced singing show on TV by a long way.

  10. It’s funny how 9 and 7 can’t get all thier reality shows out, often overlapping them and Ten is left short. Re-boot Idol or create a replacement for short lived renovator series. That Woolies branded food show would work well, or re-boot AGT and get a 1M lead into 7.30. Come on Ten your just not giving me any incentive to turn you on.

  11. Had a quick look at next sundays epg last night. Unless anythings been altered since then, both nine and ten had repeated movies at around 8.30ish whilst seven had “to be advised” for most of the night. I’m sure the networks have new content sitting on their shelves waiting to be aired but all they want to do is air repeats. Another sunday where the tv will be turned off for most of the night.

  12. It beggars belief Ten didn’t have a single thing ready to go post Masterchef, Comm Games, 50th birthday, etc.

    Even a short run of something like a Thank God You’re Here for the six or seven weeks to get them through until the new US TV season starts.

    Sunday 7.30 is not the place for repeats of Modern Family you’ve already screened countless times in a million other timeslots.

    Pathetic.

  13. At least there was the Juventus vs A league all stars match on last night because if that wasn’t on then I probably wouldn’t have turned the tv on for most of the night. I did watch that uncomfortable interview via an article on the ninemsn home page which included video on the full episode of sixty mintues. They divided the interview into four parts on there. I watched part one and then the next video I was automatically taken to was part 4. This kept happening and I had to look for each part myself. Such a basic thing to get right and channel nines catch up services failed at. Not the first time its happened either.

  14. Maybe Ten know they can’t compete against the final of The Voice Kids and decided to save their content. Seven did it for two consecutive Mondays last month for The Voice and then Masterchef.

    The difference for Seven that an off night isn’t a complete shocker when it comes to overnight ratings figures.

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