Seven and Nine in ratings week dead-heat

7Apr08

Source: David Dale, Sun Herald Blogs

It was a week of historic moments in Australian television. On Thursday, Kate Ritchie’s character Sally Fletcher left Home and Away after growing up in public for 20 years, and 1.5 million people in the mainland capitals tuned in to say goodbye.

Also on Thursday, the central character in Life On Mars,
Detective Inspector Sam Tyler, gave himself a happy ending by
committing suicide, which must be a first for a TV series (and which
suggests that the program’s writers think Heaven is Manchester in the
1970s). Only 757,000 people saw him jump.

On Monday Enough Rope with Andrew Denton pulled the second
biggest audience in its history — 1.5 million to see footballer Wayne
Carey hang himself. On Sunday Channel Seven’s Gladiators scored the highest audience for any series debut this year — 1.9 million. But Channel Nine was delighted with its 1.6 m for Without A Trace and 1.5 m for CSI and the ABC was pleased with 1 million for its new coastal dramedy East of Everything, which doesn’t beat the SeaChange record but is a strong start.

Those were the highs of the week. The lows went to Nine: only 1.2 million for the return of Sea Patrol and 704,000 for the new game show The Power of Ten.
In spite of this, Nine ended the week in a dead heat with Seven — both
averaged 27.7 per cent of the prime time audience, while Ten got 21.9,
ABC got a healthy 17.5 (thanks to Wayne Carey and Doc Martin) and SBS
got 5.1 (including 241,000 for the year’s most underrated show, Newstopia).

What Australia watched, week ending April 5
1 GLADIATORS Seven 1,868,000
2 BORDER SECURITY (R) Seven 1,767,000
3 SEVEN NEWS – SUN Seven 1,613,000
4 WITHOUT A TRACE Nine 1,583,000
5 CSI Nine 1,516,000
6 ENOUGH ROPE WITH ANDREW DENTON ABC 1,498,000
7 RAMSAY’S KITCHEN NIGHTMARES Nine 1,489,000
8 NCIS Ten 1,476,000
9 SCU: SERIOUS CRASH UNIT Seven 1,466,000
10 BONDI RESCUE Ten 1,464,000
11 RSPCA ANIMAL RESCUE Seven 1,459,000
12 60 MINUTES Nine 1,419,000
13 SEVEN NEWS Seven 1,385,000
14 POLICE FILES – UNLOCKED Seven 1,369,000
15 HOME AND AWAY Seven 1,349,000

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