★★★★★ 0/5

MasterChef tops entertainment, Drama struggle on SBS.

Ratings: 10 tops entertainment, Seven wins the night, but local drama does it tough on SBS.

13
Leave a comment

It was another quiet Thursday of viewing, none felt more harshly than by SBS with a first run local drama at under 100,000 viewers.

In the back of the week, MasterChef Australia led entertainment at 578,000 metro viewers and topped the demos.

That was just ahead of an extended Home & Away  (561,000 / 519,000 from 7pm), 7:30 (515,000) and Foreign Correspondent (429,000).

Later The Front Bar was 388,000 then Q+A (319,000).

Thursday Night NRL was up to 334,000 across Nine’s channels.

Seven network won Thursday with 28.3% then Nine 26.3%, 10 19.5%, ABC 17.0% and SBS 8.5%.

Seven News was #1 at 1.03m / 967,000 for Seven. The Chase drew 575,000 / 353,000. 10 Years Younger in 10 Days was 171,000.

Nine News (951,000 / 928,000) was best for Nine. A Current Affair won its slot at 720,000 then Hot Seat (479,000 / 297,000). Paramedics was 201,000 across the network, with Kings Cross ER at 124,000 in 3 cities.

The Project drew 416,000 / 253,000 for 10. 10 News First was 379,000 / 219,000 then Law & Order: SVU (207,000 / 187,000).

ABC News was 664,000 for ABC. Sammy J. (341,000), A Life in 10 Pictures (188,000) and The Drum (186,000) followed.

On SBS it was Walking Hadrian’s Wall (202,000), SBS World News (173,000 / 126,000), The Handmaid’s Tale (122,000), Mastermind (100,000) and The Unusual Suspects at just 88,000 -its lowest so far.

Would I Lie to You? led multichannels on ABC TV Plus at 154,000.

The Morning Show: 157,000 / 108,000
Today Extra: 113,000 / 71,000
Studio 10: 46,000 /

OzTAM Overnights: Thursday 17 June 2021

13 Responses

  1. It’s on my list to watch. Definitely will tune in. Tend to not watch too many shows at once.
    Have watched a few SBS dramas recently. Been watching Bloodline this week and just finished Handmaid’s Tail.
    It’s a shame about those numbers but as someone said commented on streaming SBS shows is where the numbers are going. Wakefield on ABC was similar with a drop in numbers each week.

    1. For The Handmaiden’s Tale yes, it had 560k for #4.1t, as it has a lot of younger female viewers who stream it relgiously, though its lost 1/3 of its audience by the end. Other dramas not so much. Ep 1 of The Unusual Suspects had 143k, the others didn’t make the list.

  2. If its on free to air we record it and watch later anyway. The best dramas are usually on late on SBS – The Sleepers is excellent and Stella Blomkqvist was pretty entertaining.

  3. I love SBS and I want it to succeed, but when it runs so many British shows at prime time, shows such as Secret Britain and series about endless trains criss-crossing the ‘mother country’, what message does that send? And, importantly, what audience are SBS likely to get? More than likely, they will get a whole lot of homesick, ageing ex-pat poms. And that mob aren’t in the slightest bit interested in Aussie dramas, they just want to watch English dramas (which are usually brilliant BTW). But how does that help our drama industry? Incredibly talented, dedicated, hard-working artist and professionals waking up to news of an audience of less than 100,000 people. It’s depressing and destructive. Why would anyone bother?

    I’ve heard the SBS argument that these English shows help SBS pay for local content, but I don’t think it’s worth the damage they do to the SBS brand. Last week…

    1. I’ve seen this discussed a few times. And it’s often said in relation to there not being as much foreign language content other than foreign news. SBS World Movies had helped to bring the network back towards the charter and is one of the better multichannels. I’d say that also some of the largest migrant groups or people born overseas are from the UK. Possibly more cross-productions between UK and Australia could help workers in or from the local industries.

      1. Much of 32 Film is made up of English language films as are most SBS movies, bizarrely so in the case of NITV (‘The Jetsons’, ‘Flintstones’ etc)-what was the last SBS drama production that actually did well, even with the relatively limited maximum audience they have?

        1. East West 101 lasted a few seasons, and Pizza (and its off-shoots) had success on SBS. Sadly, others had failed to deliver in recent times, despite being good shows, like Deep Water, On the Ropes and Sunshine.

    2. I understand where you are coming from, but, have you seen what Handmaid’s Tale gets online. It’s huge. So SBS has a very big audience it can advertise to and it shows even with a schedule full of trains and secrets everyone who wanted to watch Handmaid’s Tale on SBS found out it was available.

  4. The ABC Plus Thursday line up is quite strong. It was usually the place to go in the ABC2 and ABC Comedy days for any repeats or encore showings from the ABC main channel Wednesday line up.

    Now with new and current episodes of Would I Lie to You? and Mock The Week. I wonder how MTW rates compared to WILTY and if they would do well on the Wednesday main ABC channel line up.

  5. More people are watching Unusual Suspects on SBS on Demand than live. But the timeslot hasn’t done it any favours on a night where there are less people watching tv and rarely if ever in recent years has drama done well on a Thursday. It’s a brilliant show.

    1. People keep complaining here that an 8.30 start is ‘too late’ for anything-usually SBS starts ‘MA’ rated drama at 9.30 or even later, so they did well with keeping it on at that time.

      1. The Unusual Suspects has an M rating. It should be on at 8.30 Sunday, Monday or Wednesday. Drama watchers are not tuning into commercial television on Thursday nights. The latest several years of ratings data shows that. SBS have an appalling record of putting Australian drama in awful late timeslots. They did it with Safe Harbour too

        1. Next Thursday’s ep of Unusual has an ‘MA’ rate-it also had saturation promotion on SBS channels and I noticed a billboard ad for it at the local shopping centre here in Perth today-and yet Handmaid received a third more viewers in a later slot.

Leave a Reply