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MKR back on top as Nine waits too long for Planet Earth II

Ratings: Did Nine wait too long to play Planet Earth II? Third in its timeslot behind I'm a Celebrity.

Did Nine wait too long to screen Planet Earth II?

That’s the question it needs to be asking after the flagship show came third in its timeslot last night.

My Kitchen Rules was back on top with 1.08m viewers last night, leading in all cities (and tieing in one). I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here scored second place with 834,000 viewers, tieing for first in Melbourne.

Planet Earth II debuted to 734,000 viewers, with the DVD already available.

Last November when Virginia Trioli asked Nine CEO Hugh Marks how long Australians would wait he said, 85% of viewing was still Live linear television,

“So yes there will be some people at the margin …and we all know those people because we’re in the business. But the great bulk of the population are still watching Live linear television. So we might lose some people, ” he said, “But if the show is good, when it plays, it will play well.”

Meanwhile Murder Calls Australia (570,000) drew some viewers away from Seven’s Murder Uncovered, which still beat it at 577,000 viewers, down by 380,000 viewers on last week.

Seven Network won with 31.7% then Nine 26.3%, ABC 18.1%, TEN 17.9% and SBS 6.0%.

MKR was #1 for Seven with 1.08m viewers followed by Seven News (1.01m / 1.01m), Home and Away (750,000), Murder Uncovered (577,000) and The Chase (547,000 / 344,000). Surveillance Oz was 298,000.

Nine News (908,000  / 874,000) led for Nine then A Current Affair (770,000), Planet Earth II (734,000), Murder Call Australia (570,000) and Hot Seat (455,000 / 254,000). Life Inside Jail was 284,000.

I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here rose to 834,000 for TEN. This is Us was 544,000, The Project was 526,000 / 333,000, TEN Eyewitness News was 511,000 and Madam Secretary was just 186,000.

ABC News (720,000) was best for ABC then 7:30 (595,000), Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery (584,000), The Weekly with Charlie Pickering (580,000), Stop Laughing This is Serious (571,000) and Adam Hills: The Last Leg (322,000).

On SBS it was Tony Robinson Down Under (219,000), Vikings (170,000), The Eighties (158,000) and World News Australia (138,000).

Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom topped multichannels with 198,000.

Sunrise: 307,000
Today: 269,000
ABC News Breakfast: 107,000 /

OzTAM Overnights: Wednesday 15 February 2017

14 Responses

  1. Story of the ratings last night for me is the big tumble for Murder Uncovered. Nine putting such a similar show against it really split the audience and both shows suffered as a result. But considering it nudged a million last week, I question whether perhaps viewers didn’t see a need to return to the show.

  2. So Planet Earth 2 didn’t rate as well as hoped. That must come as a surprise…to nobody! Except the 9 Programming Department. And it will be back in two weeks?? What???????

  3. I’m liking this is us so far but curiosity got the better of me last night and I did a google search to see if I could find out something more about a particular item I saw in last nights episode. I’ve also done the same with new eps of greys because 7 has chosen to delay it. When I like a show part of that enjoyment is going online reading up about that show and that’s all too easy to do when networks choose to delay.

  4. For some context- should we add anywhere in the story that despite not having My Marriage Rules against it last night.. MKR still lost 600,000 viewers since last year?..

  5. ‘… he said 85% of viewing was still Live linear television’

    Well, maybe so, though personally I’d be surprised if it’s really that high – I suspect there’s a lot more ‘hidden’ non-traditional viewing they’re not capturing well enough to be aware of. But only an idiot would throw away a chance at picking up some of the 15% they’re missing out on, especially in a declining market.

    And not playing something like Planet Earth II – based on previous Attenborough series, a near-guaranteed rater – until after the DVD/Blu-ray were easily available from overseas (&, lets be honest, available illegally too) was simply throwing away ratings…

    1. Agree about the hidden audience. Less than 4 M out of a 5-capital city population of around 15 M were watching FTA at peak last night. You only need 1 M out of the other 11 M to be watching non-linear / VoD and the 85% figure is blown out of the water instead of out of proportion.

      I understand that Nine wanted to show the entire series in our artificial ratings season but I think that was in error. They should have stumped up the cash to play it as soon as they could after the BBC (or before) and then had a second bite later on, poss after Easter.

      The fact that it’s not even on next week in eastern states is just crazy. Way to lose any momentum it might have been building.

  6. Hugh Marks must be wiping some of that egg of his face this morning, 85% of the population is happy to wait instead of purchasing the dvd/bluray ? Me thinks that is too high, and showing the numbers that tuned in last night, probably a lot lower than that. If the particular tv show is meant to be very good, people will not wait for the local airing, and will instead buy it from amazon or watch via other means with out ads and watermark and in HD(which Planet Earth 2 is meant to be seen in).

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