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Clever coding skews Sunday ratings

Ratings: It was an evening of overruns, simulcasts and segment coding -so what's the rub?

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Sunday night was an evening of overruns, simulcasts and segment coding with TEN and Nine both coding shows strategically -so much so that it is difficult to make direct comparisons about how shows performed. Preliminary OzTAM data has not been adjusted to reflect actual broadcasts.

The best snapshot of how each network performed is in the evening share.

Nine network won the night with a 30.7% share then Seven 28.6%, TEN 21.0%, ABC 14.4% and SBS 5.4%.

Nine News (1.3m) was best for Nine but while The Block won its timeslot it was coded into two segments: Room Reveal: 1.21m / Triple Threat: 1.1m. Nine’s numbers are yet to be adjusted for overruns. 60 Minutes was 1.03m. Movie: Salt was 425,000.

Seven News (1.06m) topped Seven’s night then Sunday Night (980,000), Downton Abbey (894,000), Australia: The Story of Us (879,000) and Castle (368,000).

I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! was simulcast across three channels last night and the FIA Formula One Australian Grand Prix across two channels, with the Race down on 2014. Individual channel numbers are not available. Strategic coding also sent TEN’s multichannel shares plunging to as low as 1.3% on ONE. Fortunately it still had a good night on network share, up considerably on the same day as 2014 thanks to other programming. On TEN Shark Tank ranked 973,000 (TEN advises will be adjusted to 856,000, still a good result). NCIS: New Orleans returned to 552,000 well up on Empire last week, which was just 200,000 last night.

ABC lifted last night, up on all its key shows: ABC News (789,000) then Life on the Reef (663,000), Broadchurch (633,000) and Fortitude (321,000). Compass returned to 265,000.

On SBS ONE it was Lost Kingdoms of Central America (220,000), SBS World News (189,000), Dateline presents: Gunned Down (148,000) and Nazi Megastructures (129,000).

7TWO’s Escape to the Country led multichannels at 243,000.

OzTAM Overnights: Sunday 15 March 2015

15 Responses

  1. All I can say is that those not watching Empire are missing out big time. From someone who was only mildly interested from the promos – I’m surprised that it has become my favourite drama.

  2. Networks being able to cleverly code in order to skew ratings is outrageous. A ratings system which can’t be directly influenced by networks needs to be devised.

  3. Empire started 18 minutes past its schedule start time, and for folks who don’t watch any of the preceding programming they probably packed up their tellies hopped into their pj’s and went to bed. With the recording devices set to start 10 minutes early and 30 minutes added to schedule finish time there was a 1 min and 28 seconds left after the credits played out. Small adjustment to be made to the recording devices next week people 😀

    1. Lol … I’m still waiting too. What a farce these networks are, with their petty little competitive squabbles. The last program scheduled to start at 8.00pm wins ! At least I didn’t suffer through watching Celebrity, there was a lot of channel switching going on, and in the end I missed half of Shark Tank.

  4. I watched Empire again and i’ve got to say it’s such a fantastic show. When I first say the ads I thought No not for me but I was wrong I love it. Wish it would have done good business on Ten like it did on the US.

  5. David, can you write something about yesterday’s F1 Grand Prix making its debut on Fox Sports? I watched the Ten coverage mostly during the race for Mark Webber’s insights but when I switched over to Fox Sports during the ad breaks I was shocked to discover Fox Sports had commercial breaks during the race as well. The first ad break I saw was a normal 2 or 3 minute break, then later on I saw a break that involved shrinking the race picture into a box on the screen and showing the ad in a larger box on screen with sound. I would have expected an ad free race on Fox so was a little disappointed.

  6. Ch10 has to be careful with how they treat those who want to watch Netball on FTA. It seems because of F1 coverage they chose to show the Qld Firebirds game around midnight, long after anyone who’d be interested in watching the game, was awake.

    Surely they could’ve shown the game, at least in Qld, on TEN, as an alternate? The coverage would’ve been for a couple of hours, so it would’ve been a major break and there was an alternate way of seeing F1.

  7. Empire is getting better by the week. Shark Tank is getting better every week, and I think that it is time to stop family feud being simulcast. I agreed with the Formula One, but Family Feud.
    Caught Studio Ten this morning with Adam Boland reporting…could this be the return of the wonder kid to Ten.

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