So who won summer 2020 / 21?

Seven has claimed a win for the 2020 / 21 summer season -a summer which many of us spent at home.

Seven won 7 of the 10 weeks of Summer and Nine won 3.

The biggest single audience was for ABC’s Midnight Fireworks on New Years Eve at 1.63m viewers.

Various other successes were as follows Seven: Seven News, Test Cricket, Holey Moley; Nine: Nine News, Carols by Candlelight, MAFS: Grand Reunion 10: I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here; ABC: ABC News.

All networks except Nine lifted on their summer of 12 months ago -but it should be noted Nine lacked the Australian Open. It will presumably pick up gains in survey, where it is of more value.

Network:

Seven: 26.7
Nine: 26.2
10: 19.4
ABC: 18.2
SBS: 9.5

26-54:

Nine: 26.6
Seven: 26.2
10: 25.8
ABC: 13.5
SBS: 8.0

16-39:

Seven: 28.1
10: 25.7
Nine: 24.9
ABC: 14.1
SBS: 7.3

Seven’s Director of Network Programming, Angus Ross, said: “Across the day, from Sunrise at breakfast through to 7NEWS in the evening and into prime time, we owned summer TV.”

Chief Content Officer and Executive Vice President, ViacomCBS Australia and New Zealand, Beverley McGarvey, said: “The unbridled success of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! reiterated that the landscape of summer viewing has changed forever. Its dominance across all platforms, in its timeslot in total people, under 50s and in all key demographics, night after night proved unrivalled. Achieving its highest ever commercial shares and achieving its biggest total audience since 2017, it cemented itself as the #1 summer entertainment television event.”

Hamish Turner, Program Director at Nine believes the absence of the Australian Open will pay off during ratings survey.

“There’s more people coming into TV at that time, because you’ll have your competitors at full strength running their shows,” he said. “So there’s more people in the ecosystem and therefore, after they’ve watched their (stripped) shows do they go into the AO and does that actually buoy the numbers? So there’s a lot of factors there that are untested. But I think overall, it will deliver very strong numbers for those two weeks from a share perspective. For us it sets up a very strong promotional platform for our slate of new shows. And those shows will then push later into the year. So we may have lost a little bit at this point in time, but you’ll get back later in the year.”

Seven also claimed a win in BVOD amongst the three Free to Air commercial networks.

7plus secured a share of 40.6%, ahead of 9Now on 40.2% and 10play on 19.2%.

Source: OzTAM, Metro. Summer 2020/21: 29/11/2020-6/2/2021. FTA Shares. Data: Cons7 prior L7D, Overnight L7D.