One of the biggest stories of the week slipped under the radar as the fortunes of a morning TV show took a dramatic turn.
Channel 9 executives are facing a new crisis with TODAY EXTRA getting zeros in Perth. It follows a horror year for sister show TODAY where ratings have fallen dramatically since the relaunch on January 14 with Georgie Gardner and Deb Knight.
You can read more on this in the Battlezones section below.
Meanwhile, with the ending in sight for Nine’s unstoppable Married at First Sight, we’re already starting to see opportunities arise for the other networks, specifically Seven. With some clear air on Wednesday night My Kitchen Rules saw a dramatic lift, helping Seven win the night with a 34% network share. The extra night of solid ratings helped Seven win the week with a 32.4% network share to Nine’s 30.7%. Nine will end week 15 well with the finale of MAFS, but how ratings go after that is anyones guess.
Nine placed first in the network channel share across all key demographics: People 25-54s (41.9%), People 16-39s (42.6%) and Shopper with Child (41.8%).
10 continues to struggle (my computer now types that sentence automatically) and wasn’t helped by the woeful ratings for Sunday Night Takeaway which could only generate 218,000 viewers on a Sunday Night. Even Sunrise outrated it!
NETWORK SHARES
Seven: 32.4%
Nine: 30.7%
ABC: 16.1%
10: 13.9%
SBS: 6.9%
2019 RATINGS CHART – NETWORK SHARES WEEKS 1 TO 14
Taking a look at primary channels and Seven just managed to pip Nine at the post with a 22.5% share versus 22.2%. ABC remained in third position with 11.3%, beating 10 on 8.9% and SBS on 4.5%.
Nine also placed first in the primetime channel share across all key demographics: People 25-54s (30.6%), People 16-39s (31.1%) and Shopper with Child (31.3%).
WEEK 14 RATINGS
**All data below has been calculated from overnight top 20 lists provided by OzTam, not adjusted figures**
BIGGEST SHOWS FOR EACH NETWORK (excluding nightly news)*
NINE: MARRIED AT FIRST SIGHT (Sunday) – 1,485,000
SEVEN: MY KITCHEN RULES (Wednesday) – 916,000
10: GOGGLEBOX (Thursday) – 579,000
ABC: HARD QUIZ (Wednesday) – 728,000
There’s no doubt Nine’s rivals will be grateful the mega-successful hit Married at First Sight is coming to an end. MAFS delivered another strong week with the first vow renewal episode of the season, which saw Cam propose to Jules, draw an average national audience of 2.043m (5 City 1.486m Reg: 556,000). This was the most watched show of the week.
In the digital/9Now space MAFS continues to dominate the rolling 28 day VPM ranking. The show holds 15 of the top 20 programs, with the most watched episode at a VPM of 480,000
The question for execs at Seven will be what to do with My Kitchen Rules in 2020. Does Seven believe they have anything that could hold out against MAFS as strong as MKR? MKR showed it is still a strong performer when its not up against MAFS, hitting 916k on Wednesday. So, do Seven move it to another part of the year and risk losing significant share or do they go into 2020 knowing they will lose Q1?
Big decisions ahead.
Tom Gleeson has proved a spinoff show can become more successful than the original. The Hard Chat segment is without a doubt the most talked about part of The Weekly with Charlie Pickering (610k) but the spinoff show, Hard Quiz was the ABC’s #1 show of the week with 728k. Will the two shows swap timeslots next year so that Gleeson can provide better lead-in to Pickering?
As we approach the end of the first quarter there is a lot of data for the networks to digest. This data will impact what is on offer this time next year. While Nine and Seven will most likely be looking at the same slate, 10 will have to go back to the drawing board. Nothing has worked but I would expect a renewal for Dancing With The Stars. When everything else is dire, shows with a glimmer of hope are likely to get picked up again.
Sunday Night Takeaway is dead. Oh, what could have been.
Word is no money requests have been rejected from CBS, meaning this is the first time in years 10 have not had to play it safe. It is now up to the creativity of executives to show they have what it takes to drive success. With Q1 a write-off, they will be hoping old brands like Bachelor and Masterchef will bring some relief. The problem is these shows make noise and will drive up share, but they are not runaway trains like Married at First Sight. Will 10 be able to crawl out of the hole that is 4th place before the end of the year? Executives will be hoping so as it won’t be a good look for CBS in its first year of complete influence over the programming slate.
BATTLEZONES – BREAKFAST
How long will Nine continue to hold the line with the current incarnation of the TODAY show? That’s the question many in the industry are asking (and those within Nine too) as the show settles in at around 190k average each week.
It’s a big drop in fortunes for the show that in 2016 claimed the title of #1 breakfast show… that was until Seven challenged it (it’s best you read the article in the link because it’s too complicated to explain here).
There wasn’t too much movement this week, although ABC News Breakfast did drop a bit while Sunrise maintained it’s domination. Michael Pell, the Executive Producer of Sunrise, took to twitter to share his joy and point out the show is on an upward trend.
Unprecedented result for a morning TV show in Australia this week. @sunriseon7 trending up and reaching new heights in the ratings. Well done to the entire team. This is a group of people who care so much about the product, they don’t sleep. All credit to them. pic.twitter.com/jvGRzpIbVa
— Michael Pell (@MichaelPell) April 5, 2019
BATTLEZONES – MORNING TV
There are some interesting things going on unnoticed in the world of Morning TV. Despite being the clear number 2, TODAY EXTRA is facing an uphill challenge due to the poor lead-in from its sister show. In fact the show got zeros four times in Perth on Tuesday in the 15 minute splits for the main show and the zeros continued for the 11am coded section as well..
The news wasn’t all bad though with David Campbell and Sonia Kruger easily holding onto the number 2 position across the 5 cap cities.
The Morning Show romped home with an average audience of 134,000, followed by TODAY EXTRA on 97,000 and Studio 10 continues to struggle on 55,000.
BATTLEZONES – NEWS
7 News/Today Tonight claimed the #1 spot this week, winning Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. There’s a real tussle going on in the Sunshine state at the moment and it will be interesting to see how the year pans out.
9 News took top honours in Sydney and Melbourne, although Melbourne was tight once again, with only a difference of 3,000.
BATTLEZONES – 7PM
Home & Away had a fantastic week, lifting its audience 5.2% week-on-week (WOW). Seven’s soapie usually sits in 3rd place but this week rose to the #2 slot, behind a very strong A Current Affair which also lifted its audience even though it didn’t air in Brisbane on Thursday and Friday nights. New executive producer Fiona Dear had a 5.5% growth WOW.
ABC News was down slightly (-2.4% WOW) but the biggest drop was The Project (-4.3% WOW). 10’s 7pm offering failed to maintain any gains from the week before when more viewers sampled the show for its Egg Boy and NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern exclusives.
The following charts have been supplied by Nine;
Co-Creator and Editor of the TV Blackbox website, Robert McKnight is highly regarded Australian Television Producer, he has worked at SEVEN, NINE and TEN, and is most well-known for creating and producing STUDIO 10. Currently Rob is the host and producer of the TV Blackbox, McKnight Tonight and Monsters Who Murder podcasts.
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