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ABC’s New Year’s Eve coverage sheds 249,000 viewers

ABC’s coverage of the New Year’s Eve midnight fireworks managed 1.237m metro viewers, a fall of 249,000 year on year.

When 2017 became 2018, 1.486m metro viewers watched the fireworks on the national broadcaster.

ABC’s coverage was down year on year, but it still handed the channel a Monday night win

However, ABC’s coverage boosted the channel ahead of its commercial free-to-air rivals, concluding on an average 21.3% share. By comparison, Seven finished on a 20.1% share, while Nine’s share was 15.7%, Ten’s was 5.4% and SBS averaged a 6.9% share.

From a network perspective, ABC also nabbed a win off Seven, with shares of 27.5% and 27.4% respectively. Nine Network’s share was 22.4%, while Ten and SBS’ network shares were 13.8% and 8.9% respectively.

The midnight fireworks pulled in the largest audience of the night and topped all key advertising demographics – 16-39s, 18-49s and 25-54s. Nationally, its audience grew to 1.752m. The countdown to midnight averaged 886,000 metro viewers, and the Family Fireworks at 9pm pulled 741,000 metro viewers. Nationally, those numbers were 1.295m and 968,000.

ABC’s New Year’s Eve 2018 with Charlie Pickering managed 515,000 metro viewers, up on last year’s 498,000. Last year Pickering was forced to apologise after slipping up and telling viewers the midnight countdown was the “only time it’s okay to kill a police officer”, instead of the word “kiss”. 

Outside of New Year’s Eve coverage, Seven News was the most-watched program of the evening, with a metro audience of 727,000. Nine News didn’t crack the 700,000 mark – on 668,000 metro viewers. ABC News averaged 485,000, according to OzTAM’s overnight figures.

Sport was also popular on New Year’s Eve, with Seven’s Big Bash clash between the Adelaide Strikers and Sydney Thunder capturing 435,000 and 416,000 for sessions one and two respectively. When adding in regional viewers, session one grew to 636,000 and session two had an audience of 610,000. The innings break had a metro audience of 384,000 and a national audience of 583,000.

Last year, when The Big Bash was on Ten, the first session of the matched between the Adelaide Strikers and Brisbane Heat pulled in a metro audience of 544,000, while the second session handed Ten 626,000 metro viewers.

Fox Cricket’s coverage of the Big Bash pulled 172,000 and 140,000 for the two sessions, while its between-the-innings coverage managed 153,000 national subscription TV viewers.

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