Hogwart’s works its magic for Nine

6Jul09

Source: David Dale, Sun Herald Blogs

You would be entitled to imagine that every Australian who might want to see Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone would already have seen it. HPPS is, after all, the eighth highest grossing movie in this nation’s box office history. It is also the number 21 most purchased DVD in our history.

In spite of all this, Channel Nine chose to program HPPS last Saturday night as a last ditch fightback against Ten’s inexorable progress towards becoming Australia’s number two most watched network.

Clearly Nine has not entirely lost its sense of what Australians can be persuaded to watch. In the mainland capitals, it found 883,000 people who don’t like AFL, who have been stirred by recent publicity about Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince coming to cinemas on July 15, and who couldn’t be bothered getting their old battered disc of HPPS out of the cupboard.

That clinched the week for Nine. The prime time audience shares were: Seven 27.6 per cent, Nine 25.4, Ten 24.8, ABC 16.8, SBS 5.4. For next Saturday night, Nine has programmed Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets — Australia’s No 3 best selling DVD of all time and No 12 highest grossing movie.

This was Pay TV’s account of itself for the week: “An all-time record 257,000 viewers watched the penultimate episode of Australia’s Next Top Model, in which Clare was eliminated, leaving Cassi and Tahnee as the final two contestants. The winner will be determined in the live finale on FOX8 on Tuesday night. In other entertainment programming, NCIS on TV1 was seen by 109,000 viewers while SpongeBob SquarePants on Nickelodeon had a year-to-date high of 95,000 viewers. Law & Order on W was watched by 92,000 people this week, Coronation Street on UKTV was seen by 82,000 viewers and Hannah Montana on Disney Channel was seen by 78,000 people.

In sport programs, Live: NRL Rabbitohs v Wests Tigers on FOX Sports had 292,000 viewers and 195,000 people watched Live: AFL St Kilda v Richmond. Live: AFL: On the Couch was seen by 111,000 people, AFL Open Mike had its best result of the year to date with 90,000 viewers and the Australian cricket team’s tour of England saw 84,000 people tune in to Live: Cricket: Tour Match on Thursday night (all on FOX Sports).

“Subscription TV was the number one source of television across all Australian homes in week 27. STV channels accounted for 22.2% of all metropolitan viewing between 6am and midnight, was 21.4% of all regional viewing and 56.9% of all viewing in subscription TV homes.”

What Australia watched, week ending July 4

1 MASTERCHEF AUSTRALIA – CHALLENGE Ten 1,896,000
2 SEVEN NEWS – SUN Seven 1,780,000
3 NINE NEWS SUNDAY Nine 1,660,000
4 FIND MY FAMILY Seven 1,655,000
5 SEVEN NEWS Seven 1,647,000
6 TALKIN’ ‘BOUT YOUR GENERATION Ten 1,594,000
7 MASTERCHEF AUSTRALIA Ten 1,576,000
8 SEVEN NEWS – SAT Seven 1,561,000
9 ROVE Ten 1,545,000
10 PACKED TO THE RAFTERS Seven 1,520,000
11 THE ZOO Seven 1,519,000
12 THANK GOD YOU’RE HERE Seven 1,494,000
13 TODAY TONIGHT Seven 1,493,000
14 60 MINUTES Nine 1,400,000
15 SPICKS AND SPECKS ABC1 1,369,000

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• The National Ratings
• Sci-fi triumphs on Pay
• ABC the Underdog
• What Woman Watch

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