The ABC’s election coverage, Australia Votes, was the most watched program of Saturday night as Australians across the nation tuned in to watch the cliff hanger election result.
According to the Oztam preliminary numbers, the ABC had an average metropolitan audience of 858,000 at its peak compared with 606,000 for Nine’s Election 2016: Australia Decides and Seven’s Federal Election 2016 coverage which had 318,000.
Seven’s ratings result was impacted by Saturday night’s AFL game between the Sydney Swans and Western Bulldogs which which drew 295,000 in Melbourne and Adelaide.
Meanwhile the Oztam numbers show that the ABC metro audience peaked between 8pm and 11pm at around 1.2m.
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The ABC has, this afternoon, sought to trumpet the ratings result, noting that nationally average audiences was much higher peaking between 8.00-9.30pm AEST when it had an average audience of 1.7m across the two channels of ABC and ABC News 24.
The public broadcaster also saw strong number of Australians watching online with the ABC’s digital division recording some of the highest number it has ever recorded, with news and current affairs achieving 2.8m visitors, 4.3m visits and 20.5m page views, a result that is double the traffic recorded for the 2013 election.
Over on Ten, which did not have rolling coverage of the close election result, it’s most watched show was Bondi Vet with 304,000 viewers while a repeat of the Tom Cruise movie Mission Impossible drew 295,000 viewers.
In the overall viewing audiences for the week, Seven has narrowly claimed another week in the ratings year with a 19.5% share to Nine’s 19.4% share while Ten, buoyed by the strong performance of Masterchef had 16.4% share on its main channel.
Seven has now won 15 weeks of the ratings year to Nine’s four.