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The Ashes’ audience not enough to help Nine beat Seven on Thursday

The evening session of the first Ashes test between Australia and England on Nine yesterday had 603,000 metro viewers, according to OzTAM’s overnight preliminary metro ratings.

The number was slightly behind the record-breaking 665,000 who tuned in to Nine’s multi-channel Gem last time the series was hosted in Australia in 2013. 

When The Ashes were broadcast on Gem in 2013, it handed the multi-channel – which traditionally has a much lower audience share – 15%  of TV viewers.

This year, The Ashes screened on Nine’s main channel. The third session of the day, from 3:00pm to 6:00pm had 603,000 viewers. The earlier 10:00am to 1:00pm session had 475,000 metro viewers, while the 1:40pm to 3:00pm session had 358,000.

According to adjusted figures supplied by Channel Nine allowing for the coverage’s extended times due to a rain delay, the third session’s average was 825,000 across the metro markets.

The strong showing for the cricket match was not enough for Nine to win the ratings battle, with the station securing an 18.5% audience share, behind Seven’s 24.1%.

Seven’s win was largely thanks to its drama offerings and news and current affairs line-up.

The Good Doctor once again dominated the TV ratings, with 1.072m metro viewers tuning in last night.

The US drama screens twice a week on Seven – Tuesdays and Thursdays – with all but two episodes so far surpassing 1m metro viewers.

The eighth episode, which aired last night, was the most-watched Thursday-night episode with more viewers traditionally tuning in on Tuesdays.

Seven’s other entertainment offering for the evening, a 90-minute run of soap opera Home & Away, was the second-most-watched non-news program of the night thanks to a metro audience of 660,000.

Nine’s most-watched program for the night was Nine News with 876,000 – behind rival Seven News’ 1.069m metro viewers. The most-watched entertainment program on Nine was a repeat of RBT [Random Breath Test], which had 609,000.

Ten’s Gogglebox was the station’s most-watched program with 562,000 viewers. Ten had an average audience share of 13.0%.

ABC finished the night with a 9.7% average, ahead of SBS’ 5.0%.

On a network basis – including the various multi-channel offerings – Seven also won the night with 32.8%. Nine had 25.7%, Ten 18.7%, ABC 15.6% and SBS 7.2%.

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