Another ratings week win goes to Nine as audiences flock to news programming amid coronavirus outbreak
The current outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19) has sent viewers flocking to news reporting with Seven News holding the top three spots for most-watched programs of the week. Nine News held fourth place and news programming took six of the ten spots.
Nine News saw an increase of over 18% in viewers for the 6pm news bulletin and Monday night saw Nine News hit its highest episode of the year with 1.066m metro viewers. A Current Affair also hit its highest 2020 audience on Monday night with 848,000 metro viewers.
Today also found success throughout the week, reaching its highest audience since 2018 on Wednesday with 251,000 metro viewers.
Nine took seven of the top ten spots for programming across the week with Married At First Sight (MAFS) sitting in fifth – eighth place. Overall, Nine held a 29.2% audience share as a network and 21.5% as a channel. Seven held 26.6% as a network and 18.7% for its main channel, while Ten secured 17.1% and 11.2%. 10 Bold was the most-watched multi-channel of the week with a 3.5% audience share.
This is the seventh week of the surveyed TV ratings and Nine has so far won every week.
Nine won the first four days of the week (Sunday – Wednesday), while Seven won Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Seven’s AFL coverage kicked off on Thursday, drawing in 798,000 metro viewers. On Saturday the AFL brought in 394,000 metro viewers for the match, with Seven airing the Greater Western Sydney Giants vs Geelong Cats game in Melbourne on Seven, the Sydney Swans vs Adelaide Crows game on 7mate in Sydney and the Gold Coast Suns vs Port Adelaide Power on Seven in Adelaide and 7mate in Brisbane.
Since those games, the AFL has announced the suspension of its 2020 season until at least the end of May. The AFLW season, which Seven also airs, has been cancelled with the finals unplayed and no premiership to be awarded.
The below graphs were supplied by Nine and exclude ABC and SBS. The data may therefore differ from the above.
