Seven won the ratings year (which concluded yesterday) with an overall audience share of 28.7 per cent (6pm-12mn, 5 cities), followed by Nine (27.7), Ten (21.2), ABC (16.9) and SBS (5.6).
As far as individuals channels go, Seven (24.6) won against Nine (23.5), Ten (19.7), ABC1 (14.5), SBS1 (5.0), GO! (3.8), 7TWO (3.5), 7mate (2.7), GEM (1.7), ABC2 (1.6), One (1.4), SBS2 (0.6) and ABC3 and ABC News 24 (both 0.5).
Seven News, Today Tonight, Sunrise, The Morning Show and Weekend Sunrise all outrated their Nine Network rivals.
But not everything went Seven’s way this year. The White Room, The Bounce, Australia Versus and Beat The Star were all prime-time ratings flops. Iron Chef failed to gain a significant hold on the audience. Home And Away, which has just ended its 23rd year, was beaten by repeats of US sitcom Two And A Half Men on Nine, and the future of City Homicide appears uncertain.
The Nine Network (i.e. Nine, GO! and GEM) is claiming victory in the advertiser-friendly demographics of 18-49, 16-39 and 25-54 age groups, although Nine’s primary channel was beaten by Ten in 16-39 age group viewers.
The TV Week Logie Awards scored slightly lower than last year though this time it had to contend with competition from Masterchef Australia.
Nine continues to draw heavily on Two And A Half Men to boost its numbers, not just on Nine but also on digital channel GO! Eddie McGuire’s Millionaire Hot Seat is now paying dividends against Seven’s Deal Or No Deal.
Apart from the Masterchef titles the top of Ten’s list of ratings performers were predominantly imported programs – Modern Family, NCIS, Glee and Undercover Boss – although Shaun Micallef’s Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation was a strong performer as was the Australian adaptation of Undercover Boss and the new factual series Keeping Up With The Joneses. The special Hamish And Andy’s Caravan Of Courage: Great Britain And Ireland and the telemovie Hawke were also ratings hits.
The elephant in Ten’s room this year, however, is the Commonwealth Games. The 11-day competition, traditionally a ratings winner, failed to return any significant ratings results for Ten, although it did give a boost to sports channel One. The effect of the Games, which took Ten’s entire prime-time schedule out of circulation for two weeks, has seen shows like The 7PM Project and Neighbours lose any sense of ratings momentum they might have had pre-Games and saw viewers flock to digital channels in search of other viewing options. The 7PM Project has seen its numbers slowly claw back to somewhere near decent, but Neighbours continues to stumble and has hit hit new ratings lows this year but will live on next year on Ten’s new digital channel, 11.
ABC’s The Gruen Transfer was among its highest raters this year, and its election-themed spin-off, Gruen Nation, topped the national broadcaster’s ratings list this year. Spicks And Specks and The Chaser’s Yes We Canberra were strong performers, along with imported shows Midsomer Murders, Doc Martin and New Tricks. Drama series Rake, starring Richard Roxburgh, got off to a high-rating start but ratings quickly fell. The network also had to get the axe out – a rare occasion – for its Wednesday night series, Strictly Speaking, which returned ratings that even had ABC hanging its head in shame.
SBS, which has lost the Top Gear franchise to Nine, saw ratings fall this year, though the network scored well with the FIFA World Cup, from South Africa, with the match between Ghana and Australia being watched by over 1.3 million viewers.
Networks now go into summer non-ratings mode until February, though viewing data is still collected and reported to networks over the non-ratings period.
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