• Australian Ninja Warrior launch pulls biggest non-live sport TV audience of 2017
• Nine records biggest Sunday share of 2017, best Sunday for anyone since April
• Seven’s House Rules grand final well behind Warrior with 1m watching
• Yummy Mummies launches with 755,000, MasterChef Sunday drops to 625,000
See full ratings figures on the Mediaweek Morning Report here.
Seven
The Grand Final of Seven’s House Rules was well in the shadow of Nine’s Australian Ninja Warrior debut last night. However, the House Rules audience wasn’t too far off what the series did in 2016 when it wrapped.
The 2016 House Rules series final did 1.24m for the winner announcement and 1.14m for the remainder of the Grand Final episode. That compares to last night’s 1.14m for the winner announcement and then 1.0m for the remainder of the Grand Final episode. Those might be slightly disappointing numbers, but given the size of the Ninja Warrior crowd it could have been a lot worse.
At the same time the launch numbers for Yummy Mummies could have been terrible, but in the current TV climate 755,000 for a program starting at 9pm and running for 90 minutes is almost a win, particularly given the pre-launch reviews which had labelled it the worst TV program of 2017… so far.
Nine
The launch audience of 1.68m for Australian Ninja Warrior is a stunning result for the Endemol Shine Australia series filmed last December. It’s a tribute not only to the production values, the hosts, but the PR campaign too which peaked at just the right time. The family-friendly programming cleaned up in all demos and has become the most-watched program of the year so far apart from the Men’s Final of the Australian Open tennis and the two State Of Origin games played more recently. This should be a massive week for Nine given there are more Ninja Warrior episodes tonight and Tuesday and then the Game 3 decider in the Origin series.
60 Minutes screened after Ninja Warrior with a lead story from Allison Langdon speaking with Rohan and Kathy Kelly about losing their two sons. The audience of 865,000 also heard from Peter Stefanovic on North Korea and Charles Wooley on goats.
TEN
MasterChef Australia was hurt most by the success of Ninja Warrior with the Sunday audience down to 625,000. The Sunday episode has been attracting the smallest audience of the week for the series recently, but has been bubbling along most weeks in the 700,000s. However, it did hit a low back in week 24 with 606,000 watching.
Elsewhere on TEN two episodes of Modern Family were under 300,000, while an episode of Bull after MasterChef did 326,000.
ABC
Grand Designs New Zealand has taken over the Sunday early slot after the news with 495,000 watching last night, which secured a spot in the top 10.
Poldark then did 433,000, which was down on last week’s 457,000.
SBS
It was a shocker of a night for Richie Porte who crashed out of Le Tour de France. Coverage of Stage 9 was the most-watched program on the channel with 248,000 after 193,000 on Friday and 237,000 on Saturday.