News

AFL returns to television with 591,000 viewers

Seven’s AFL returned to television last night as Carlton took on the Richmond Tigers pulling 591,000 metro viewers, helping Seven to a Thursday night win.

The Richmond Tigers put the 43-point win under their belt in the opening game of AFL for the season. The game was the second most-watched non-news program, according to OzTAM’s overnight preliminary metro ratings.

Melbourne had the highest audience for the opening AFL match with 372,000 metro viewers – the most-watched program across the city.

The sport-studded television line up saw Nine’s Thursday Night NRL  clash between the South Sydney Rabbitohs and the Sydney Roosters manage 412,000 metro viewers. The Roosters’ victory grabbed 240,000 metro viewers in Sydney – down on last week’s 252,000 – and 172,000 in Brisbane, also down on last week’s 238,000.

In national figures Nine’s NRL topped Seven’s AFL seeing 699,0000 tune in, while AFL’s debut averaged 627,000 national viewers.

Seven News at 6pm was the most-watched program for the evening, despite not breaking the 1m mark, with 928,000 metro viewers – ahead of Nine News’ 909,000. At 6.30pm Seven News/Today Tonight pulled 772,000 and was beaten by Nine News’ 916,000.

Off the back of the AFL’s debut and Seven News’ success, Seven won in overall audience share with 22.1%, beating Nine’s share of 18.8% and Ten’s 14.5%.

Meanwhile ABC averaged a share of 10.3% while SBS grabbed 4.1%.

Away from news and sport, Ten’s Gogglebox which aired at 8.30pm was the most watched non-news program for the evening managing 772,000 metro viewers – nationally the show grabbed 1.041m viewers.

The observational reality TV show was also the most-watched program across advertising demographics 16-39, 18-49 and 25-54.

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