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Comedy Festival Gala returns, Nine wins Wednesday.

Ratings: Crowds return for the Comedy Festival, while Fisk holds well for ABC. A closer battle at Breakfast.

After being cancelled in 2020, the Melbourne Comedy Festival returned to screens last night with  Part 1 of its 2021 Gala. And live crowds.

Screening at 9:30pm it drew 270,000 metro viewers on ABC with Part II to screen next week (already on iview). The numbers are down on 2019 when ABC unusually coded the show into 5 parts, most of which were above 340,000 on a Sunday night.

Meanwhile Married at First Sight topped the demos and the night at 1.02m viewers, defeating Hard Quiz (640,000), 7:30 (625,000), Border Security (336,000 / 229,000) and The Cube (312,000).

Later Fisk led on 515,000 then The Weekly with Charlie Pickering (510,000) and Amazing Grace (429,000).

Nine network won the night with 33.8% then Seven 23.8%, ABC 19.6%, 10 15.2% and SBS 7.6%.

Nine News (894,000 / 894,000) for Nine. A Current Affair led its slot at 723,000. Hot Seat (437,000 / 288,000). Footy Classified was 74,000 in 3 cities with New Amsterdam at 81,000 in 2 cities.

Seven News (898,000 / 889,000) was best for Seven. Home & Away was 501,000 then The Chase 449,000 / 285,000. The Front Bar was 240,000 with Ambulance: Code Red on 216,000.

ABC News drew 670,000 for ABC. The Drum was 162,000.

The Project pulled 388,000 / 255,000 for 10. 10 News First was 320,000 / 214,000 with Bull at 166,000 / 148,000.

On SBS it was Britain’s Ancient Tracks (162,000), SBS World News (161,000 / 124,000), Australia In Colour (192,000), Departure (69,000) and Mastermind (63,000).

Bluey led multichannels at 161,000.

Sunrise: 242,000
Today: 227,000
News Breakfast: 107,000 / 82,000

OzTAM Overnights: Wednesday 24 March 2021

8 Responses

  1. I really can’t see The Cube improving let alone returning with those numbers ,even a change of day and time wouldn’t make a difference and I think they have hung alot of the success for the show with Andy Lee ,he’s only average in my opinion and can only work with what your given.

  2. Tv execs should be kicking themselves today. The Michael Gudinski memorial was just brilliant and needed to be on tv. Even if it was on the foxtel music channel, an abc channel or a digital channel but it was brilliant. Where else would you see Jimmy Barnes debut a new song wearing a kilt and hear Ed Sheeran perform a new song which he wrote in quarantine which was just beautiful, then seeing him do a duet with Kylie including singing loco motion.

    Then at the end when everyone got on stage Ed was a back up tambourine player to Jimmy and Co. Well done to everyone who was involved in the memorial last night. It was a nice send off.

    1. Completely agree about the Michael Gudinski memorial. The YouTube count was indicating that more than 53,000 were watching, so there was a market for it, and I would have thought it would be broadcast on a secondary channel.

    2. Absolutely agree …it was awesome…..and moving all at the same time…the only reason I knew was David Knox posted in the lounge….
      A mountain of a man…beloved the world over….

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