A Queensland victory in State Of Origin and a big Sunday room reveal at The Block have propelled Nine to another comfortable victory in Week 47.
While technically we are still in an official ratings survey, our three commercial networks have for the most-part already moved into summer programming mode.
A mixture of COVID production delays and a sharp collapse in the advertising market has turned commercial television into a depressing wasteland filled with repeat movies and endless promo’s promising things will be better in 2021.
Credit should be given to the ABC for continuing to produce fresh local content into December. But the real winner at the moment is Netflix, dominating the national conversation with The Queen’s Gambit and season four of The Crown.
Week 47 – Key Data
- Nine was the nb1 primary channel with a 22.1% share.
- Nine was the nb1 network with a 30.5% share.
- Nine won the key demos in 25-54s and 16-39s.
- 10 finished in fourth place with an appalling primary channel share of just 9.4%. Their worst result since Week 14 in 2019.
- 10Bold was the nb1 multichannel.
- Episode 190 of Home and Away was the most-watched program for the week on streaming platforms
(full channel data below)
Nine has now won 21 weeks outright of the official ratings year meaning they can once again declare themselves “Still The One”.
It’s been an impressive performance from Nine in 2020. The network was the least affected by COVID-19 production setbacks, and the Hugh Marks strategy of outsourcing primetime tentpole franchises from Australia’s leading production houses has clearly paid dividends.
Seven remain stuck on 17 wins, plus one week tied with Nine. The network spent the first half of 2020 burning off a heap of Tim Worner commissioned, uninspiring content (MKR, House Rules and Pooch Perfect) It all tanked dismally.
But once they reached the halfway point and new CEO, James Warburton was able to get some of his new shows on screen (Big Brother, Farmer Wants A Wife and SAS Australia), the network showed signs it will be far more competitive in 2021.
2020 started with so much promise for Channel 10. Australian Survivor and MasterChef delivered their best seasons in years and viewers loved it.
But a mix of COVID production delays and budget cutbacks imposed by their new UK overlords has really hurt this network. They will finish 2020 in a distant fourth place, and it’s hard to have much hope anything is going to improve in 2021.
Nine
After dominating the schedule for the last two months, there was just one episode of The Block this week. COVID-19 has prevented the network from filming the usual room inspection episodes.
- Sunday (Room Reveal) – 1.451 million national (1.065 mil metro)
- Sunday – 1.364mil (977 metro)
Series-to-date, The Block has reached an average BVOD audience of 136,000 (Live + VOD), had 9.9 million total stream starts (Live + VOD) and 391 million minutes viewed (Live + VOD).
The game three decider of State Of Origin not only delivered a remarkable victory for Queensland, it also supplied an improved ratings result for Nine.
- Game 3 – 2.732 million national (1.882 mil metro)
- Game 2 – 2.434 million (1.654mil metro)
- Game 1 – 2.378 million (1.598mil metro)
While the result was an improvement on the first two matches, it was still the second lowest rating Game 3 match since 2003.
Overall, the 2020 series has produced the lowest tv ratings since OzTAM commenced collecting data in 2001. It also marks the first time the series has averaged below 2 million capital cities viewers since 2007.
The national audience for this State Of Origin series was down 18% compared with last year, with the Sydney average down 16% and Brisbane down 18%.
The rest of the week on Nine isn’t really worth reporting on. Monday night repeats of Gold Coast Cops, a series which has previously failed on 10, didn’t do much better at their new home.
- Episode 1 – 587k (400k metro)
- Episode 2 – 600k (416k metro)
Seven
Sunday night quiz format Beat The Chasers is continuing to maintain its audience for Seven, mainly due to plenty of support from viewers in regional markets. In its third week, the show had a national audience of 1.008 million (630k metro).
Beat The Chaser’s ratings are far from outstanding, but they are solid. It will be very interesting to see if Seven continues with this format in 2021.
The penultimate week of SAS Australia experienced a moderate boost in audience, mostly thanks to The Block no longer being in the schedule.
- Monday – 974k national (676k metro)
- Tuesday – 966k (668k metro)
The rest of the week was a complete wasteland with a schedule now littered with repeats and uninspiring content. Without the strength of its 6pm news service, Seven would have finished a long way off the pace.
10
A few years back, 10 made a commitment to programming a “50-week schedule”. Well, it was hard to find much evidence of that this week.
Sunday nights are now the home of Graham Norton Show episodes, despite an impressive guest list the program averaged a mere 395k (267k metro).
A quick schedule change would see 10 broadcast a US edition of 60 Minutes on Monday night featuring an interview with former President Barrack Obama.
Ratings for the interview, which was repackaged as a special from The Project were not great, but they did at least manage to beat Nine with 619k (470k metro).
Have You Been Paying Attention was the highlight of 10’s week with 825k nationally (617k metro).
The rest of the week on 10 was a complete write-off.
If you are a regular listener to the TV Blackbox podcast, you would be well aware “🎶 JAMIE OLIVER DOES NOT RATE 🎵.”
Despite this catchy jingle from our own Rob McKnight, the network opted to air another four underwhelming episodes of Jamie Oliver Quick and Easy Food this week. The results were unsurprising.
- Wednesday (Ep1) – 350k national (267k metro)
- Wednesday (Ep2) – NA national (212k metro)
- Thursday (Ep1) – 348k (261k metro)
- Thursday (Ep2) – 315k (234k metro)
Multichannel 10 Shake remains stuck at the bottom of the ladder with a paltry broadcast share of just 0.5%.
However, providing further proof you can always find a positive if you crunch the numbers hard enough. 10 tell us the channel was the #1 commercial multi-channel in under 13s in daytime (6am to 6pm) with a 19.9% commercial share. Of course, by reporting commercial figures, 10 gets to exclude the significantly bigger audience watching ABC Kids.
ABC
It was a bit of a mixed bag at the ABC with the Monday night line-up down considerably due to an absence of Four Corners. The Wednesday night comedy line-up remains the highlight, performing strongly despite competition from State Of Origin.
ABC Highlights include:
- Restoration Australia 780k national (525k metro)
- Roadkill – 515k (351k metro)
- Australian Story – 867k (601k)
- In the Face of Terror – 561(389k)
- Outback Ringer – 546k (364k)
- Capturing Cricket: Steve Waugh – 537k (383k)
- Hard Quiz – 811k (586k)
- Gruen – 798k (591k)
- Reputation Rehab – 448k (328k)
- Planet America – 456k (324k)
News
7NEWS was the top show nationally every night, with Monday-Friday at 6pm averaging 1.461mil (947k metro). 9News won the battle in Sydney and Melbourne. 7News continued its strong turnaround in Brisbane.
10 News First averaged 459k nationally Monday-Friday (317k metro)
The Project 7pm averaged 566k nationally Monday-Friday (423k metro)
Sunrise recorded another win in the breakfast timeslot with Monday-Friday averaging 455k national (259k metro), finishing comfortably of Today and ABC News Breakfast.
Weekly Network and Channel Shares – Week 47
Seven Network – 26.2%
- Seven – 18.1%
- 7TWO – 3.3%
- 7mate – 2.6%
- 7flix – 2.1%
Nine Network – 30.5%
- Nine – 22.1%
- 9Go – 2.7%
- 9Gem – 2.5%
- 9Life – 2.1%
- 9Rush – 1.2%
10 Network – 16.5%
- 10 – 9.4%
- 10Bold – 3.7%
- 10Peach – 2.%
- 10Shake – 0.5%
ABC Network – 18.3%
- ABC – 12.7%
- Kids/Comedy – 3.0%
- ABC Me 0.5%
- ABC News – 2.2%
SBS Network – 8.5%
- SBS – 4.9%
- Viceland – 1.5%
- SBS Food – 0.9%
- NITV – 0.1%
- World Movies 1.1%
