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Hot Seat recoding in a contest with The Chase

Ratings: Nine begins to split Hot Seat into two figures as it combats The Chase on Seven.

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Nine appears to be re-coding Hot Seat in the latest move to combat The Chase.

Yesterday it coded Millionaire Hot Seat (5:30 – 6pm) with 534,000 viewers. A second Hot Seat average of 340,000 represents the duration of the show that begins before 5:30pm. That’s despite the show being promoted as a 5:30pm start and despite OzTAM stipulations that coding of titles should be 15 minutes minimum.

A Nine spokesperson told TV Tonight the data would allow for fair analysis of the 5:30 – 6 half hour.

Meanwhile Nine was able to claw back a bit of share thanks to Big Bang  repeats and no Reno Rumble.

My Kitchen Rules had its second-lowest number this season for Seven, while Long Lost Family had a negligible lift on TEN.

Seven network won with 32.6% then Nine 25.0%, TEN 17.6%, ABC 17.4% and SBS 7.4%.

My Kitchen Rules was #1 at 1.28m then Seven News (1.03m / 971,000), Criminal Minds (700,000), Home and Away (691,000), The Chase (578,000 / 353,000). Blindspot was 245,000.

Nine News (963,000 / 905,000) was best for Nine then A Current Affair (839,000), The Big Bang Theory (609,000 / 544,000) and Hot Seat (534,000 / 340,000). Multi Million Dollar Mega Yachts was 226,000 in 3 cities. NRL Footy Show was 189,000 in 2 cities.

The Project was 561,000 / 394,000 for TEN. Long Lost Family was 502,000, TEN Eyewitness News was 490,000. Movie: The Heat drew 367,000.

ABC News was best for ABC at 807,000, 7:30 followed with 625,000, then The Weekly with Charlie Pickering (594,000), Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery (581,000), Luke Warm Sex (406,000) and Adam Hills: The Last Leg (324,000).

24 Hours in Emergency drew 308,000 on SBS followed by Walking Through History (265,000), Vikings (242,000) and SBS World News (117,000).

ABC2’s Charlie and Lola topped multichannels with 254,000.

Sunrise: 322,000
Today: 298,000
ABC News Breakfast: 83,000 / 53,000.

OzTAM Overnights: Wednesday 30 March 2016

32 Responses

  1. Can’t stand Hot Seat as I dislike multiple choice questions and the way the Millionaire format drags them out. I find them a lot more tolerable on The Chase, and the rapid-fire questions leave less room for Andrew O’Keefe to act like a fool.

  2. Channel are desperate these days will try any trick to trick advertisers into thinking they are still the one . I prefer the chase any day cannot stand Eddie Maguire didn’t he invent the term ” your boned” when sacking female staff at nine .Good to see sunrise back winning the breakfast wars .

  3. Watch Hot seat all the time. No interest in The Chase.
    Eddie talks to the contestants more i find.
    Dont talk about adds how about MKR .They advertise next nights show even before half way through
    current eposode.

  4. Know that all channels will do anything for ratings but please channel 9 if you are going to resort to these type of tactics please at least have the show on for an hour like The Chase, nine seem to be getting worse and I don’t think they are doing themselves any favours, why don’t they listen to the viewers.

    1. MM : Im 53 years old and have never had a box for ratings yet.
      Why go Nine look at Ten with Family Feud its on 3 channels how ridiculous at the same time.
      I Don t care about the ratings always watch Nine.
      Look at MKR .What their showing now is exactly same as Masterchef.
      Look at 7 year itch. Cmon absolute crap television.

  5. As others have said this is beyond clever tactics, it’s rather pathetic trickery. ‘Fraud’ possibly sounds a little strong, given this is ‘only a TV show’, and not some genuinely serious malpractice by a multi-national corporate giant. But given that (as I understand it) OzTAM is co-owned by the major networks and so theoretically should be unbiased to/against any of the key players, what is the arbitration process to handle what appears to be completely unfair, distorting and self-serving poor practice on the part of Channel 9.
    I’ve no doubt Seven, Ten, and others have done and will continue to try to work right on the margins of fair practice to best exploit the ratings ‘rulebook’ for their own purposes, but this stunt by Nine just seems to take it to a whole new level!

  6. What’s the point of the coding fudge? Data is collected by the Oztam meters on a minute by minute basis and I assume it is available for negotiations with FTA customers (the ones who pay the wages by buying airtime, such as media buyers and managers with a marketing budget to allocate).

  7. I’ve always wondered exactly what time Seven codes “The Chase Australia” for. We all assume that it’s from 5:30 but it could easily be 5:35 or 5:40 or whatever to give them an extra boost.

  8. Maybe the ratings people should counteract this and release the ratings in 15 min blocks and then the network can put their own spin on it – surely that is what important to the advertiser

    1. Actually I’m pretty sure it’s ratings have lifted a bit this year and this is the first week it has dropped significantly. I would say the Easter holidays would possibly be impacting on it with a fair chunk of their core audience travelling and on holidays.

  9. I didn’t think that Nine would be that desperate to fudge Hot Seat’s ratings. I know that it has been advertising a 5.30pm start on air and on print for some years now, despite airing at 5.25pm since pretty much it’s inception. So Nine are now showing Hot Seat ratings for 5.25 – 5.30pm, and a 5.30 – 6pm? Quite silly, actually!

    Shows like The Chase, Hot Seat, The Project, the three morning shows (on 7, 9 and 10) etc shouldn’t be allowed to have various coding for their shows. It’s one show, which means one ratings for that program! Will the ratings of the future look like this: http://tvtonight.com.au/2013/05/uh-oh-are-these-the-ratings-of-the-future.html (an article from this site almost 3 years ago….)

    1. It’s a shonky practice. Splitting the reporting of a single show is trickery of the worst kind. This needs to be stopped immediately, otherwise OzTam ratings completely lose credibility.

  10. I hear that Ch 7 are considering splitting MKR into 10 codes so that no other show is in the top 10! OzTam provides advertisers and Networks with quarter hour figures so Ch 9’s action is purely for the spin doctors.

  11. Those Sunrise figures are probably not what Sam wants to see given it’s one of their biggest wins since the relaunch and she is on holidays. That’s bullshit from Nine coding Hot Seat like that. If I was you David I would just quote the pre 5.30 figure in protest at this nonsense.

    1. I agree David – just report the 5.25-5.30 numbers to make a stand against this nonsense.

      It should be as simple as this – every advertised show should be judged on its ratings over the full course of the program. No splitting. The only exceptions should be reality show finales (“winner announced” segments) and major sporting events.

      By allowing this silly split coding to creep on with the news, The Project , etc, we end up with this.

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