Week 24 of the 2020 rating year has been completed, and it was a week that would have had the champagne flowing at Seven.
For the first time in 2020, Seven’s new CEO James Warburton, finally had content airing in primetime that was commissioned under his stewardship. The launch of the heavily promoted Big Brother delivered the goods with the Monday eviction averaging 1.298 Million nationally (930k metro).
The rejuvenated reality format continued to perform strongly on Tuesday and Wednesday before the return of the AFL on Thursday night delivered Seven record numbers and ensured the network would have its biggest win in Total People data in two years.
Network Share
Seven – 31.1%
Nine – 26%
10 – 19%
ABC – 15.7%
SBS – 8.3%
Primary Channel Share
Seven – 22%
Nine – 17.4%
10 – 13.1%
The benefit of AFL airing in some states helped 7mate take the crown of top multichannel with a 4.2% share, ahead of 10 Bold on 3.7%, 7two on 3.4% and 9Go on 2.9%.
While the successful launch of Big Brother helped get Seven back in the ratings game, the real winner in primetime this week was MasterChef on 10.
The rejuvenated cooking format continues to perform strongly with the Tuesday night episode taking the title of nb1 entertainment program of the week with an audience of 1.31 million viewers nationally. (1.02 million metro).
Wednesday’s MasterChef was the second biggest entertainment program of the week with 1.27 million viewers nationally. (978k metro). The consistently of the format airing Sunday to Thursday helped 10 boost its primary channel share up 19% compared with the same week in 2019.
For Nine, the main highlight was The Voice winning its Sunday timeslot with 1.206million nationally (874k metro). The Monday episode also did well with 1.192 million (849k)
With the network struggling to find new content due to COVID, “classic” repeats of Kath and Kim on Tuesday night (389k metro) and Taronga Who’s Who in the Zoo on Wednesday ( 412k metro) left the network well off the pace.
Most concerning for Nine would be the low numbers for the NRL. Thursday night’s game had an average audience of 195k in Sydney and 182k Brisbane. Friday’s match had 204k in Sydney, but just 100k in Brisbane.
The novelty of the NRL season relaunch and empty stadiums appears to have worn off with viewers. It will be interesting to see if the AFL experiences a similar decline in the coming weeks.
Seven News once again took the crown as the nb1 6pm news service averaging 1.787 million nationally (1.135 million metro). Nine News won in the east coast metro markets, but it was a very close battle in Brisbane.
Sunrise took the breakfast crown yet again with 440k nationally (268k metro).
