★★★★★ 0/5

Meoww! Internet cats the answer to Seven’s woes.

Ratings: Who needs drama & documentary? Seven's YouTube cat videos become the #1 entertainment show of the night.

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You can just feel the dogs and the pandas lining up in the wings.

Last night Seven’s audacious programming of YouTube cat videos was the #1 entertainment show of the night at 917,000 viewers. It more than doubled the last audience of Restaurant Revolution, the show it replaced, and defeated The Hotplate (839,000) and The Great Australian Spelling Bee (642,000) -despite the show already being available for free on YouTube.

It was even higher than Seven’s own locally made drama Winners and Losers. Unfortunately for SBS it also over-shadowed their own excellent doco series Who Do You Think You Are? Next week Seven has already promised Dogs Make You Laugh Out Loud -likely to be the first of two specials.

All over Australia producers are now frantically exploring ways to inject grumpy cats into their projects.

Seven Network won the night with 28.9% then Nine 27.3%, TEN 20.1%, ABC 16.9% and SBS 6.9%.

Seven News (996,000 / 940,000) was best for Seven then Cats Make You Laugh Out Loud (917,000), Home and Away (780,000), Winners and Losers (609,000 / 587,000) and Million Dollar Minute (472,000).

Nine News (1.11m / 1.01m) led the night for Nine then A Current Affair (994,000), The Hotplate (839,000), Hot Seat (584,000), The Truth About Sugar (503,000) and Embarrassing Bodies Down Under (324,000).

The Great Australian Spelling Bee was best for TEN at 642,000. TEN Eyewitness News was 638,000, The Project was 603,000 / 526,000, NCIS was 460,000. NCIS: LA was 353,000.

ABC News was 854,000 for ABC then Kevin McCloud’s Escape to the Wild (696,000), 7:30 (665,000), Foreign Correspondent (547,000), Frantic Family Rescue (348,000) and Antiques Roadshow (343,000).

On SBS ONE it was Who Do You Think You Are? (457,000), Insight (267,000), Dateline (189,000) and SBS World News (141,000).

7mate’s Outback Truckers led multichannels with 261,000.

The Morning Show: 137,000 / 80,000
Mornings: 115,000 / 85,000
Studio 10: 68,000 / 45,000

OzTAM Overnights: Tuesday 11 August 2015

108 Responses

  5. How the tv landscape and viewing habits must be changing – for only 1 program – 6pm news to rate over a million on a Tuesday night! Tuesdays used to have some cache to them. Not with that selection. Ugh!

  6. There are whispers from Martin Place that Seven is currently in top secret negotiations to replace Mark Ferguson with Top Cat to read the 6 PM news. Also increasing speculation that Garfield and Puss In Boots are in contention to host Sunrise.

    2. They were talking on Sunrise the other morning about having a resident dog roaming the studio.
      There is a breaky TV show in USA that have one and apparently Michael Pell is a big dog fan and is keen to do it. This is not a joke, they seemed serious.

  7. I’m embarassed to be Australian…. Anyone who watched that drivel needs to have a good hard look at them selves and hang their heads in shame today… What a sad day for Australian TV….

    1. Honestly TVTim, lighten up! I have not watched commercial TV in ages, it bores me to death! However this show was absolutely hilarious, better than most of the other tripe served up on commercial TV. I do love cats though.

      It did also get a lot of free publicity when it replaced the other cooking show (yawn!!) or else I wouldn’t have know it was on.

  8. Well, I’m on the record as saying that I thought this would rate well but I thought somewhere around 850K. As Josh777 says, we already had proof that most people are lazy/not very choosy/idiots when it comes to cheap trash.

    This was TV for all the people who are unable to spell “youtube” and only ever watch a video if someone sends them a link on FB. I’m sure that they’re nice people but I wouldn’t want to get stuck talking to them at a party. Fortunately, it’s unlikely that they would be invited to parties that I go to.

  9. Who Do You Think You Are didn’t rate that well last week, and this weeks didn’t have Geoffrey Rush and convicts, though it was a much better episode.

    There hasn’t been much light entertainment on at 7:30pm that isn’t the contrived melodrama of cooking, renovating or singing shows. Seven were forced to offer an alternative but people enjoyed it.

  11. So 917,000 Australians watched a cobbled together programme(and I use the term loosely), consisting of youtube videos in prime time FTA of their own accord. All I can say is the people who did reward 7 for this debacle deserve all the rubbish 7 and 9 are now going to throw at them.I can feel the country’s brain cells dying as I type.

  12. Gobsmacked! Can not believe that aussies will watch such utter crap. Spelling bee comes third, great production, awesome kids, educational, fun…….. but clearly aussies want brainless fodder or bitchy cooking shows rather than appreciate our young kids. So disappointing.

    1. Just the promos of kids spelling made me want to spew and avoid it, I am also gobsmacked and cannot believe that aussies will watch such utter contrived crap, but hey no worries…..at least the kitties were funny

  13. No doubt Ch9 programmers are right now in deep discussion about whether or not to bring back “Australia’s Funniest Home Videos”. As was said on Monday night’s Media Watch, FTA’s staples are now only news, sport and reality. Thank heavens for Foxtel.

  14. That is really depressing. Not because the majority of viewers picked Internet Cats over other programming – the Kardashians have proven the world consists of people who can’t help but watch trashy TV – but that something which would have cost Seven crap-all outrated shows which would have cost Australian producers a fortune. This definitely sucks for Australian TV.

  16. Confession…..I watched the Kitties voluntarily last night, not interested in Spelling or more Food. It was trashy tv, but also quite funny on many occasions, we then sought redemption by watching Kev McCloud…..Belize looks a dangerous place, thought the family were very resourceful, but also the dad seemed a bit unhinged imo.

    1. Am really enjoying Kev’s new show .
      Yes, the father did come across as a bit unhinged and manic – perhaps gone a bit troppo in all that isolation.
      Where they were living way out there in the jungle strikes me as a very unsafe and uneasy sort of place to choose to live.

  17. I watched the cat show- it was hilarious! I’ll be tuning into the dog one next week too. So over cooking shows and the spelling bee is wearing thin so the cats were a light relief for me.

  20. OMFG!! Seriously. Just like when we voted in the current government we get what we deserve. If we are going to reward this sh#t then we only have ourselves to blame for lack of quality tv. What an effin joke Australia.

    1. Did you watch the show? On what grounds are your comments based. Do you have a predisposed predjudice against Cats? Just askin’

      1. Ive seen them on YouTube.Its not the cats it could be emus and singing rhinos its the point that is lazy stupid programming that undermines once again any chance of getting decent comedy or drama programs on tv. Now 7 and 9 will bombard us with crap and fight it out in court on the rights to mkr = my kitten rules.

  21. Wow. Stunned at this. The dogs are coming next week and then after that who knows. Sad day when YouTube clip shows win the ratings. Quality tv has gone out the window. 🙁

  24. So much for the feline video haters-I rather thought this would prove popular, at least in the short term-no reality ‘character’ casting or chopping boards or hammers visible-what the ratings for ‘Fun With Slugs’ might be is another matter…

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