TV Ratings August 24: Nine wins Thursday with NRL & Footy Show

Mediaweek editor James Manning looks at last night’s TV ratings

• Nine’s winning Thursday with NRL & Footy Show both timeslot champs
• A Current Affair pulls biggest Thursday crowd, The Bachelor is UnReal

See full ratings figures on the Mediaweek Morning Report here.

Seven

The channel traded under 16% primary share for a second consecutive Thursday, getting beat up in the major markets where it trailed Nine in Sydney and Melbourne by over 10 points.

7TWO was over 5% though, which helped make the combined channel share more competitive.

Home and Away ended its week on 631,000 after two nights just over 700,000 and another just under.

Dads Make You Laugh Out Loud seems an unlikely name for a comedy with the show drawing 449,000. It struggled in Melbourne with 99,000 where Michael Portillo had a bigger crowd on SBS at 7.30pm.

The Front Bar did 175,000 in Melbourne and 244,000 across three markets. The show was more competitive against The Footy Show, trailing by about 60,000.

Nine

There were new revelations about missing boy William Tyrell on A Current Affair, which pushed the audience up to 891,000 – the biggest audience this week and the biggest Thursday audience this year.

Live NRL followed and viewers only had to wait 11 seconds for the first try. There were 508,000 watching with 262,000 in Sydney and 246,000 in Brisbane.

The AFL Footy Show started early and featured the My Room telethon, which raised over $1m and celebrities on board included Andy Lee. The episode saw the audience slip again – since the Eddie McGuire relaunch the numbers have trended from 361,000 to 295,000 to 237,000 last night.

TEN

Last night’s episode of The Bachelor sounded a lot like an episode of UnReal, the American drama exclusive to Stan that satirises the dating genre. Get this dialogue quoted by Fairfax’s Aja Styles:

Jennifer quickly cast herself as a villain on The Bachelor Australia but to hear her tell it during Thursday’s episode, she was the victim of “mean girls” in the mansion.

“I’m so over these bitches, I just want to go home. I’m so above Mean Girls, I graduated high school ages ago,” she cried to one of the show’s producers.

“I know what I just did was game changing. I know it was game changing for him, I know it was game changing out there, I know it was game changing for me, I know that.

“I’m the game-changer, not a game-changer.”

The episode was TEN’s best with 736,000 after 787,000 on Thursday last week.

The Wrong Girl has moved to Thursday and the new season launched with 391,000 which was smaller than any of the first season numbers. The show launched with 824,000 last year.

Earlier in the night The Wrong Girl’s Madeleine West was talking about the drama series on The Project with 614,000 watching.

Common Sense was given a big rap by Corrie Perkin in her Crocmedia Don’t Shoot The Messenger podcast with Caroline Wilson last week, but the endorsement came too late. The series ended last night on 163,000.

ABC

7.30 didn’t quite make it to half a million and then the next best later in the night was Pulse on 392,000. The medical drama did 410,000 last week.

Short Cuts To Glory did 338,000 after 356,000 last week.

SBS

Great British Railway Journeys was not far off the top 30 with 338,000.

Gourmet Farmer followed with 266,000, down from 306,000 last week.

To Top