The ABC’s cuts specials deliver bumper audiences as Big Bang Theory repeat wins night

The second part of Bob Hawke’s life story and the Media Watch and Q&A specials looking at the future of the ABC were enough to give the public broadcaster a healthy lift last night, with a 17.8 audience share.

The Q&A special on the state of the media enjoyed a significant boost getting 730,000 viewers at 9.35pm, up from 552,000 last week, winning its timeslot. Meanwhile Media Watch, which revealed the extent of the ABC cuts at 9.20pm had 786,000 viewers, up on 722,000 last week. Both shows beat Nine’s Big Brother, which had 653,000 viewers, up marginally on last week, and was the most watched show amongst people aged 16 – 39.

The public broadcaster pulled in a bigger audience share than Seven in both Sydney and Melbourne, with 19.8 per cent and 19.4 per cent compared to Seven’s 17.9 per cent and 16.7 per cent, and was only marginally behind Nine, whoich won the night with 19.6 per cent, and Seven which had 18.3 per cent, according to the OzTam overnight metro ratings.

Nine’s repeat episode of The Big Bang Theory at 8pm was the most watched show of the night, pulling an audience of 1.046m, just beating the ABC’s Australian Story which saw 955,000 viewers tune in for part two of the story of former prime minister Bob Hawke. Last week part one of Hawke’s Australian Story was watched by 965,000 viewers.