Modest start for Spelling Bee, Nine wins Sunday.
Ratings: Spelling Bee will take time to build in its new timeslot, but MasterChef won for TEN.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
It’s going to take some time to build The Great Australian Spelling Bee after a modest launch of 456,000 viewers last night, third in its timeslot.
Strictly speaking the show was down 52% on its 2015 debut, but TEN has sought to find a more family friendly timeslot this year after a 7:30pm slot last year against cooking shows on rival networks. TEN fared better with MasterChef which won its slot and led the Demos.
Meanwhile Nine News and 60 Minutes were both ahead of Seven counterparts.
Barracuda slipped in its second week, down from 514,000 to 448,000 -but the show has also been available in full on iview.
Nine network won Sunday with a 29.0% share then Seven 28.9%, TEN 20.0%, ABC 14.6% and SBS 7.5%.
Nine News was #1 with 1.28m for Nine then 60 Minutes (932,000), David Attenborough’s The Hunt (514,000) and movie: Edge of Tomorrow (426,000).
Seven News (1.2m) led for Seven then Sunday Night (758,000), Border Security (705,000) and Billy Connolly’s Tracks Across America (563,000). Bones was 305,000 / 182,000 in 4 cities.
MasterChef Australia (1.12m) was best for TEN. The Great Australian Spelling Bee was 456,000, TEN Eyewitness News was 371,000 and movie: Anchorman 2 was 255,000.
ABC News drew 688,000 for ABC followed by Grand Designs NZ (595,000) and Barracuda (448,000). Stop Laughing This is Serious was 267,000 and Compass was 266,000.
On SBS it was Rome: Empire Without Limit (246,000), Tour de France (185,000), SBS World News (176,000) and Grand Tours of Scotland (120,000).
ABC2’s Charlie and Lola (233,00) was best on multichannels.
OzTAM Overnights: Sunday 17 July 2016
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- Tagged with 60 Minutes, ABC News, Barracuda, Billy Connolly's Tracks Across America, Bones, Border Security, Charlie and Lola, Compass, David Attenborough's The Hunt, Grand Designs NZ, Grand Tours of Scotland, MasterChef Australia, Nine News, Rome: Empire Without Limit, SBS World News, Seven News, Stop Laughing This is Serious, Sunday Night, TEN Eyewitness News, The Great Australian Spelling Bee, Tour de France
13 Responses
Have now watched all of Barracuda through iView.
Found it good enough to keep me wanting to watch the next episode.
Not great but certainly a cut above the usual home-grown drama. Agree it was a lot more restrained than the book and therefore suffered somewhat as a result.
Matt Nable as the undervalued swimming coach was outstanding as usual – the real standout of the show. Rachel Griffiths was compelling as the snobby, overbearing mum.
So much for all those people saying Spelling would rate better at 6.30pm Sunday. Ten have been promoting the hell out of this for weeks, and I don’t even watch a lot of TV. I think last year’s modest numbers spoke for themselves.
I suspect SB appeals mostly to children/parents and grandparents, hence the modest numbers. The time slot is a problem as well. Many people unwilling to abandon News/Sunday Night/60 Minutes.
If I was the Channel 10 programmer I would put it on Saturday night after Bondi Vet. The young adults are heading out on the town and they don’t watch these shows anyway. Channel10, you can have that advice for free.
To be honest I completely forgot about Spelling Bee until my girls asked me if they could watch it after seeing ads during Disney Family Feud which we played back just after 7pm. Wasn’t recording Spelling Bee though so hopefully an encore will air at some stage…
I’d say there’d be others forgetting as well but to me its not a mass audience type of show so the ratings will never be huge – 456k is not that bad considering but Ten would hope for more.
I recorded “Family Feud” and “Spelling Bee” so as not to interrupt viewing of Seven News and Sunday Night, but then watched both. Would I be right in assuming people who do this are not reflected in ratings?
No that’s not quite right. If you’re in the OzTAM panel and you record and watch before 2am it’s included. If it’s after that it goes into the Timeshifted numbers. If you’re not in the OzTAM panel then what you personally do is not noted anyway. Those included are a sample to reflect wider trends.
Barracuda is a pretty good show but all the advertising for it has people screaming at each other (most of it out of context for what’s actually happening in the show). The ABC have definitely stuffed things up.
Yes, the ads put me off bothering to check it out. ABC are not very good at making promos for their serious dramas.
Yes, Barracuda is remarkably restrained for an ABC drama.
I genuinely believe the ABC has no idea how to market anything, whether it be comedy, drama or genre shows.
I would have Launched MC at 6.30 n Bee following that to capture the adults then replay at on Sat night following aat 6.30pm. Then have it on at 7pm every Sunday.
don’t know why the changed the time for spelling bee from if it got good ratings last year, don’t try to fix whats not broken.
I recall quite a few families frustrated by the timeslot, and lower numbers later in the season.
Would be interesting to know if the second half-hour was stronger than the first, given both Seven and Nine’s news bulletins run until 7pm. I’d suspect a switch over at 7pm, much like The Project’s ratings for the 7pm half are stronger than 6:30pm.