ABC’s Doctor Who special ‘Resolution’ secures 394,000 viewers
The BBC’s decision to shift the traditional Doctor Who Christmas special to become a less-holiday-specific broadcast in the new year gave its local broadcaster, the ABC, a marginal increase in viewers, according to OzTAM’s preliminary overnight ratings.
The 2017 Christmas special, starring the then-Doctor Peter Capaldi had 378,000 metro viewers. There was no Christmas special in 2018. Instead, the 2019 special starring Jodie Whittaker screened last night, and had 394,000 metro viewers.
Whittaker as the first female Doctor Who
With the addition of regional figures, the special had 595,000 viewers.
The episode, titled Doctor Who: Resolution, beat Nine’s prime-time offering of Young Sheldon repeats (382,000 and 341,000 respectively) and Ten’s Jamie and The Nonnas (314,000).
Nationally, the Young Sheldon episodes had 533,000 and 497,000, while Jamie and The Nonnas had 441,000.
Seven’s Big Bash League, which screened from 7:00pm to 10:30pm (AEDST) had 560,000 metro viewers for session one and 611,000 for session two *829,000 and 885,000 nationally).
The Big Bash also won the key advertising demographics of those aged 16 to 39 and 18 to 49, however the second half hour of Nine News crept ahead for those aged 25 to 54.
Seven also had the most-watched program for the evening in the form of Seven News (915,000 metro and 1.317m national). Nine News had 857,000 metro viewers (1.100m nationally), but won in Sydney (277,000 compared to Seven’s 274,000) and Melbourne (268,000 compared to Seven’s 234,000).
ABC News at 7pm had 641,000 in the cities and 952,000 across the country, while Ten News First at 5pm had 387,000 in the five metro markets and 523,000 in total.
The low figures for Ten – its most-watched program was Ten News First – helped the ABC get ahead in terms of audience share. Ten’s primary channel had 8.4% of the audience, while the ABC had 11.2%.
Ten Bold, however, had 4.6% – the highest for any multi-channel – allowing the Ten Network to sneak ahead with 16.2%, compared to the ABC Network’s 15.5%. Ten Bold’s programming last night included repeats of Bondi Rescue, NCIS: Los Angeles, and Walker, Texas Ranger.
The Hopman Cup Day five clash between Australia and Spain had 103,000 on 9Gem, while the third night of the Brisbane International tennis tournament had 89,000 on 9Go.
Nine placed second for the evening with a 17.5% primary channel share and 26.1% for the network, behind Seven’s 20.9% and 31.2%.
SBS had a 5.7% share and an 11.1% network share.
