A familiar pattern repeated itself this week with Nine winning the first four nights of the week to build a significant lead after Wednesday night. Thursday night was a close contest with Seven just ahead in primary share, but with a bigger lead in network share.
The difference though was Friday and Saturday where network shares of close to 40% thanks to big audiences watching AFL Preliminary Finals on both nights pushed Seven into first place for the week.
In metro market results driven by the two football codes, Nine was a clear winner for the week in Sydney and Brisbane, while Seven took the other metro markets.
ABC Week 42
Primary share: 12.9% (12.3%)
Network share: 17.5% (17.3%)
Multichannels: Kids/Comedy 2.5% (2.5%) ME 0.4% (0.5%) News 1.7% (1.9%)
The return of Gruen delivered big time for the ABC on Wednesday night with 934,000 the broadcaster’s biggest audience this year. It pushed the ABC primary share to 18.0%, one of its best this year, and was the reason station and network share climbed week-on-week.
Hard Quiz was next best on 757,000 while all the 7pm ABC News bulletins were under 700,000. The other two entries over 600,000 this week were the series finale of Anh’s Brush with Fame and Australian Story.
Seven Week 42
Primary share: 20.7% (18.7%)
Network share: 30.0% (28.3%)
Multichannels: 7TWO 3.3% (3.4%) 7mate 4.1% (4.2%) 7flix 1.9% (2.0%)
The big 1m+ audiences watching Friday and Saturday night AFL Preliminary Finals were key to Seven turning around another slow start to the week. The victories to Richmond and Geelong see them playing off in the first night Grand Final next Saturday. That match, together with Sunday’s Brownlow Medal coverage, could be enough for Seven to win its second consecutive week.
Seven’s surprise performance of the week was the Cruising – The Biggest Storm doco on Sunday which just missed a top 20 spot for the week with an audience of 658,000.
Seven’s only other non-news show over 500,000 was Home and Away on 511,000.
7mate was the highest rating multichannel with a share of 4.1%.
Nine Week 42
Primary share: 19.7% (20.5%)
Network share: 27.5% (29.4)%
Multichannels: GO! 2.4% (2.9%) Gem 2.3% (2.7%) 9Life 1.8% (2.1%) 9Rush 1.2% (1.2%)
The Block Sunday room reveal again kept Nine’s Sunday winning streak intact and it ranked the #1 show of the week, behind only Seven’s Saturday night AFL. Two of the other three episodes of The Block were over 800,000 with only the Wednesday episode below that mark on 744,000.
A Current Affair just missed an average of 700,000 while 60 Minutes was on 656,000.
The NRL Preliminary Finals were not nearly as potent as the AFL clashes, with the NRL games on 550,000 on Friday and then 548,000 on Saturday.
10 Week 42
Primary share 11.3% (10.3%)
Network share: 17.5% (16.9%)
Multichannels: Bold 3.8% (3.5%) Peach 2.3% (2.4%) Shake 0.4% (0.4%)
Share was up 1.0 week-on-week for 10 and up 0.6 for the network.
Gogglebox and Have You Been Paying Attention? were the biggest hits with both over 600,000.
Also over half a million were the three launch episodes of Junior MasterChef which climbed each night following launch to a high of 576,000 on Tuesday.
The Bachelorette has slipped year-on-year with Wednesday the smallest audience ever of 468,000, but the numbers improved on Thursday to 534,000.
SBS Week 42
Primary share: 4.4% (4.9%)
Network share: 7.5% (8.1%)
Multichannels: Viceland 1.2% (1.2%) Food 0.8% (1.0%) NITV 0.1% (0.2%) World Movies 0.9% (0.9%)
The two biggest audiences came midweek with 233,000 watching Walking Britain’s Roman Roads followed by 230,000 watching the season launch of Australia Come Fly With Me.
* Figures in brackets are Week 41 shares.