★★★★★ 0/5

Murder in the Outback wins Sunday slot for Seven

Ratings: A surprise win for Seven true crime doco. ABC's Vera beats 60 Minutes.

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Seven scored a surprise hit with its Murder in the Outback doco last night, winning its timeslot with 1.03m viewers.

That’s very good news for the true crime genre, meaning more stories are likely to be greenlit by networks.

MasterChef Australia was 957,000 and still led the demos, then The Voice (749,000) and Grand Designs (526,000 from 7:40pm).

Later Vera kept up the crime genre with 626,000 beating 60 Minutes (559,000), movie: Deadpool (377,000) and FBI: Most Wanted (336,000)

Seven network won Sunday with 30.6% then Nine 27.3%, 10 19.1%, ABC 15.9% and SBS 7.1%.

Seven News was #1 with 1.24m viewers.

Nine News (1.14m) was best for Nine, with a late edition drawing 342,000.

The Sunday Project pulled 462,000 / 312,000 then 10 News First (333,000 / 243,000).

ABC News was 705,000. Compass was 182,000 for ABC.

On SBS it was SBS World News (207,000), Great Wall Of China: The Hidden Story (183,000), Saving Notre Dame (127,000). Toxic Town: The Corby Poisonings was 83,000.

Bluey led multichannels at 230,000.

OzTAM Overnights: Sunday 12 July 2020

26 Responses

  1. It was certainly not a hostile suggestion! The Guardian reviewed the doco last month, eg. I saw multiple headlines from British newspapers when I was searching, in the London Evening Standard, The Sun (UK), The Telegraph (UK), Metro (UK), and so on.

    1. A review is not a headline. An article about the documentary is not a headline. We have different ideas what a headline is. The promo implied, to me, that the documentary is going to reveal information that will generate headlines, think Netflix Making A Murderer, The Staircase etc. That’s all. Murder in the Outback did not do that, in my opinion.

        1. Well, it wasn’t meant to be a haiku. I was just googling to try to find something I read ages ago about the case this morning and half a dozen international headlines re this doco and the case popped up… Not hard to find, ie.

          1. Well that maybe so however I do not find links to the Daily Mail in Google results inspire me to take this biased documentary seriously. This documentary did not appear in my primary news source, The Guardian. Nor the ABC News. Nor SBS World News. Google is your friend is, to me, a ridiculously inane statement that serves no purpose except to antagonise. Sorry, just my opinion.

  3. The red car and jelly man are a figment of Miller’s and Fraser’s imagination for a TV show. No evidence whatsoever of that, no tyre tracks nothing. What a load of made up rubbish. An extensive prosecution found Mr Murdoch guilty, by a jury mind you, So are we saying that our system is useless ?

    1. Our system is not useless, but it’s also not perfect. Miller made the claim in his original statement, but police omitted it. In my opinion, there is definitely reasonable doubt.

  4. Nothing special about Murder in the Outback, it’s not a better show than Big Brother.!
    Demos are worse and it was it’s first debut episode, wait for it to drop down in Ratings soon..!

    1. Can’t really compare the two shows, totally different genres. MITO only has one more installment, and I imagine most people who watched will want to see te second half.

  5. I was surprised how interesting I found Murder in the Outback. We would normally watch Masterchef and record Big Brother, but we didn’t want to stop watching Murder in the Outback when 7:30 came around, so just flicked over to 10 during the add breaks. We’ll definitely be watching the next instalment.

  6. Murder in the Outback was very insightful. Bradley Murdoch deserves a retrial, so that all of the new evidence, or evidence the jury didn’t hear can be tested. DNA alone, should not be enough to convict someone of murder.

    1. At 5 hours, Murder In the Outback was too long for me (was shown in 4 parts in the UK).

      Murdoch was convicted on the DNA and Lee’s identification of both him and his truck. There is also the fact that he lies about being the Red Rooster to try and explain the DNA and was arrested and tried for the abduction and assault of two women with an identical MO in SA, but acquitted. Murdoch has appealed to the Federal Court and High Court for leave to appeal to but been denied because they found no grounds. Murdoch is staying put.

      2. But the truck she described was categorically not his truck – it seemed to be a fabrication pieced together from a Jeep or other vehicle, which might have had that sort of configuration where a person could be pushed past the front seats into the tray. And Lee identified Murdoch after seeing his picture as the suspect in the media.

    1. Whilst Murder was up on BB in total viewers that was all down to the 55+ audience. It was down 4k on Big Brother in the 25-54 demo, 61k in the 18-49s and 65k in the 16-39s. 7 cancelled A Place to Call Home when it was rating well in total viewers but the majority of its audience was made up of the 55+ crowd.

  8. The Sunday Project was sooo much better last night with Hamish McDonald hosting. Tommy Little was more connected to the rest of the team given he was in studio at the end of the desk and not in a studio by himself. Hamish and Tommy work well together. Hamish cops plenty for entertainment’s sake. Great to see him back. Good fun on a Sunday night.

  9. MasterChef has been great this year, and finale week looks to be just as good. Congratulations to all involved on this year’s season. All the contestants & judges have done a fabulous job navigating through COVID and I want to say that the new judges have been great & I love the off the cuff things they have done. They all have very warm personalities.

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