Sex Scandals = High Ratings

18May09

Source: David Dale, Sun Herald blogs

Ten started last week with a big advantage, thanks to Merlin, Masterchef and Two Apostrophes. But then the biffo scandal played into the hands of Channel Nine, boosting numbers for A Current Affair and The Footy Show, and Nine has resumed its traditional ranking as Still The Two. The average prime time audience shares were: Seven 28.3, Nine 25.7, Ten 22.9, ABC 17.4, SBS 5.6.

Sadly, the massively pre-publicised episode of Four Corners that started the week’s frenzy got only 1 million viewers in the mainland capitals, which suggests that most football fans don’t care, or can’t find the ABC on their remotes.

This was Pay TV’s account of itself for the week: “124,000 people watched FOXTEL Sport’s live coverage of the Manchester United/Arsenal game in which Manchester United took out its third consecutive English Premier League title. It was the highest EPL audience of the year and the third highest ever for EPL on FOX Sports. 289,000 people watched the Melbourne Storm prevail over the Sydney Roosters in Live: NRL Roosters v Storm and 262,000 viewed the Eagles defeat the Demons by four points in Live: AFL West Coast v Melbourne (all on FOX Sports).

Australia’s Next Top Model on FOX8 was watched by 177,000 viewers this week while Selling Houses Australia on Lifestyle had its biggest audience of the year with 129,000 people. NCIS on TV1 was watched by 107,000 people, 100,000 saw Thursday night’s episode of M*A*S*H on FOX Classics and Eastenders on UKTV had its best result of 2009 with 88,000 viewers. In children’s programming, Hatching Pete premiered on Disney Channel with 82,000 viewers and ICarly on Nickelodeon had its best result of the year with 75,000 viewers.

Subscription TV was the number one source of television across all homes in week 20. STV channels accounted for 22.5% of all metropolitan viewing between 6am and midnight, was 21.8% of all regional viewing and 58.6% of all viewing in subscription TV homes.”

What Australia watched, week ending May 17
1 TALKIN’ ‘BOUT YOUR GENERATION Ten 1,599,000
2 SEVEN NEWS Seven 1,572,000
3 SEVEN NEWS – SUN Seven 1,571,000
4 THANK GOD YOU’RE HERE Seven 1,551,000
5 NINE NEWS SUNDAY Nine 1,490,000
6 MASTERCHEF AUSTRALIA – CHALLENGE Ten 1,472,000
7 NCIS Ten 1,435,000
8 SEVEN NEWS – SAT Seven 1,434,000
9 THE ZOO Seven 1,431,000
10 TODAY TONIGHT Seven 1,418,000
11 BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS Seven 1,416,000
12 SPICKS AND SPECKS ABC1 1,358,000
13 FIND MY FAMILY Seven 1,320,000
14 MERLIN Ten 1,306,000
15 SUNDAY NIGHT Seven 1,299,000

Related stories

• Channel Seven Victorious
• Silly Season all over again
• Digital is taking off!
• Farewell AllSaints
• Channel Nine won the week

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