419,000 tune in to Melbourne International Comedy Festival Comedy Care Package on ABC
419,000 metro viewers tuned in to the ABC’s Comedy Care Package featuring highlights from previous years’ Melbourne International Comedy Festivals on Sunday night.
The program, hosted by Denise Scott, went to air in lieu of new content as this year’s festival was cancelled due to COVID-19 (coronavirus) restrictions.
With the addition of regional audiences, the program had 566,000 viewers.
On Easter Sunday last year, Ten broadcast a comedy special raising money in the wake of the Christchurch tragedy. Stand Up For Christchurch had 262,000 metro viewers, and a total of 359,000.
The most-watched entertainment program last night, however, was Seven’s House Rules: High Stakes with 630,000 metro viewers and 959,000 in total. Thus far, the show has a series high of 660,000 (1.002m) and a low of 478,000 (767,000).
Seven also had the most-watched program overall. Seven News had a metro audience of 1.236m and a combined audience of 1.838m. Nine News won in Sydney and Melbourne but only managed 1.138m overall in the cities and 1.519m in total.
ABC News at 7pm had 866,000 in the cities and 1.268m in total.
Earlier in the evening, 10 News First had 367,000 and 527,000.
And Nine’s 60 Minutes had 820,000 in the cities, which jumped to 1.167m with the addition of regional viewers.
The overnight audiences for news programs on Easter Sunday this year were significantly up on last year’s public holiday due to COVID-19 restrictions and lockdown orders.
Seven News was up 45.2% in the metro markets, while Nine News was up 32.6%. ABC News was up 46.5%, and 10 News First was up a mammoth 83.5% from last year’s 200,000. 60 Minutes climbed 45.6% on last year.
Overall, the night belonged to Nine, which commanded a 21.9% metro audience share. Seven was second on 18.8%. ABC was ahead of Ten on 13.1%, while the commercial broadcaster pulled just 7.4%. SBS had 5.7%.
Ten had success in the multi-channels though, with Bold pulling the largest share of 4.1%. The network rankings, including the multi-channels, however, remained the same. Nine Network had 32.5%, Seven Network 26.1%, ABC Network 18.3%, Network Ten 13.7%, and SBS Network 9.4%.
The week was part of the Easter non-ratings period.
