Despite all the publicity and headlines THE BACHELOR IN PARADISE fails to fire for 10 as Seven’s afternoon gameshow continues to beat plenty of prime time shows.
Channel 7 executives must be worried this morning with headlines proclaiming evening gameshow The Chase has suspended production while host Andrew O’Keefe takes time off to deal with a long-term health crisis, according to The Sunday Telegraph.
The news comes as the gameshow continues to dominate the timeslot, with the 5.30 coded section beating every single channel 10 show this week.
EVERY. SINGLE. SHOW.
That news isn’t great for 10 who will be happy to see a slight rise in audience share on one hand, but dealing with the fact the franchise is running fourth in its slot. The network also came fourth behind the ABC for the week.
Meanwhile, Channel 9 executives and producers deserve to be congratulated for the ratings domination of Married at First Sight. Despite the nay-sayers, the program has evolved to become a juggernaut and full credit must be paid to the way it has blitzed the opposition. Nine’s commercial rivals will be breathing a sigh of relief now the show has come to an end.
The final two episodes helped Nine secure the week with a 32.2% network share ahead of Seven on 30.4%. Nine also won across all key demographics in network primetime commercial shares: People 25-54s (43.1%), People 16-39s (42.9%) and Shopper with Child (42.4%).
We’ve already seen the ratings landscape start to change this week but we’ll get a real sense of where everyone sits after the two week Easter break.
It’s about to get very interesting!
NETWORK SHARES
Nine: 32.2%
Seven: 30.4%
ABC: 16.1%
10: 14.8%
SBS: 6.5%
2019 RATINGS CHART – NETWORK SHARES WEEKS 1 TO 15
Rankings remained the same on the primary channel front with Nine taking out top spot with 23.1%. Bachelor in Paradise delivered bigger primary channel shares for 10 but their disastrous Sunday night share of 5.6% made any recovery extremely difficult. It was their lowest daily share since January 2014.
Nine won all key demographics in primary channel primetime commercial shares: People 25-54s (31.5%), People 16-39s (32.1%) and Shopper with Child (31.3%).
WEEK 15 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 FINALE (Monday) – 1,968,000
SEVEN: MY KITCHEN RULES (Wednesday) – 885,000
10: THE BACHELOR IN PARADISE (Tuesday) – 553,000
ABC: HARD QUIZ (Wednesday) – 728,000
Married at First Sight really was the star of the week. Monday’s finale finished on a new high of 1.97m viewers – it’s best ever figure across six seasons.
Since this year’s season launch, in digital/9Now MAFS has consistently taken out the top spots across all VPM reports, with the first dinner party now at a VPM of well over 480,000+.
This week’s episode of Talking Married was the highest rating program on a multi-channel this year, recording an average audience of 318,000 in the metro markets.
Sunday Night Takeaway was beaten by SBS and delivered a shocking 161,000 viewers. That was always going to prove a big hurdle for 10 to overcome even with the return of Bachelor in Paradise and although it topped the demos it was fourth in its slot.
Seven’s coverage of Winx’s Final Race was watched by a peak audience of 622,000 people and reach of 1.262m in the metros.
BATTLEZONES – BREAKFAST
Things got a whole lot more interesting this week. Not only did Channel 9 executives have to deal with headlines proclaiming Karl Stefanovic could be returning to the TODAY show (he isn’t), but they also had to face the fallout of being beaten by ABC News Breakfast in the 5 cap cities on Thursday.
Nine says they weren’t beaten because the ABC adds two channels together, but that argument doesn’t stack up as Nine has previously used the combined figures of the same program airing on multiple channels when touting results for The Block Glasshouse in 2014..
So, we declare it a win an official win the ABC (yes, TV Blackbox is now the official judge in these disputes), but TODAY still managed to beat them in weekly averages. The show actually got above the 200,000 mark early in the week but lower numbers in the back half saw the average drop to 196k.
Oh, and Sunrise still whipped everyone’s arse.
It’s very good for @sunriseon7 – number one by a huge margin and up year on year.
— Michael Pell (@MichaelPell) April 12, 2019
BATTLEZONES – MORNING TV
You have to feel sorry for Studio 10’s new Executive Producer Tamara Simoneau, who is picking up the pieces after a disastrous 13 months for the show. Now that the two senior leaders who were running the show have been moved on, Simoneau is left with ratings hovering around the 50k mark. Comparing week 15 in 2019 with week 15 in 2017 the show has dropped 49% but with Simoneau in charge Studio 10 seems to be getting it’s mojo back. Let’s see if viewers give it another go.
*Please note the author of this article was the former Executive Producer of Studio 10 from 2013-2017.
Meanwhile The Morning Show continues to dominate on 131k, well ahead of Today Extra which climbed back above the 100k mark this week.
BATTLEZONES – NEWS
The team at 7 News Melbourne will be celebrating this week after claiming the top spot from perennial winner 9 News. It’s turning into an interesting battle down south with no clear indication who will take the glory by the end of the year.
Nationally, Seven also took top honours 980k to Nine’s 881k. The 7 News/Today Tonight hour won Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth while Nine took line honours in Sydney and Brisbane. It was good news for the 9 Brisbane team with a solid win over Seven this week.
BATTLEZONES – 7PM
A Current Affair, ABC NEWS and The Project all experienced gains week-on-week, but Home & Away suffered a loss from the gains it had made the week before. Seven’s 7pm drama dropped from 691k last week to 612k in week 15, not helped by scheduling changes that saw the show bumped from 7pm on Thursday to a much later timeslot in Melbourne and Adelaide due to AFL.
The following charts have been supplied by Nine and only include the commercial networks;
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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