The Block bests Australian Survivor as Olympic interest wanes
The battle between Nine and Ten for Sunday night reality supremacy fell to The Block at 7:00pm as the home renovation show lured 1.074m viewers on its debut.
Ten’s bold decision to revive an Australian Survivor (7:30pm) a decade after the previous local effort attracted a strong audience of 783,000 for the main show and 784,000 for the Tribal Council across the five metro markets.
On a night when Seven’s Rio Olympic flame finally began to fade, 60 Minutes at 8:30pm surfed in behind The Block as the third most watched show of the night at 928,000 – driven by a profile on PR CEO Roxy Jacenko about her husband, convicted inside trader, Oliver Curtis.
Seven’s perennial evening winner during the Games, In Rio Today, attracted 755,000 while the daytime broadcast of day 15 was watched by 113,000.
Ten has bet big on the Australian Survivor and the network is confident its audience will build as viewers get to know the new contestants.
“We are pleased with how Australians responded to the first episode of Australian Survivor,” said Beverley McGarvey, chief programming officer at Network Ten.
“It attracted solid audience numbers on television and on social media, and increased Ten’s audience in its time slot significantly.
“The feedback on the 24 contestants and our host Jonathan LaPaglia has been very positive. And this is just the start. The rest of the series gets more exciting, spectacular and engaging, starting tonight with a brilliant challenge and tribal council.”
Seven news at 6:00pm was the most watched show of the night with an audience of 1.391m, ahead of Nine News which achieved 1.158m.
Seven and Nine achieved a dead-heat with both stations gaining a 20.8% share and Ten delivering 13.1%, ABC 10.7%, SBS 6.1%.
While I love Survivor, and TEN claims to be happy about the numbers, I was a little underwhelmed by the casting. The usual casting cliches abound – cantankerous old guy, gay dude, weird chick, the Alpha beauties, the ex-pro Sports star, the tough Nanna. The second half was like a comfortable old pair of slippers with the challenge, the scrambling and tribal. I am hoping it builds, but maybe there is a reason Nine dumped the US version on Go!
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Watched the first episode online, 5 ads at a time, three of them were the same ad for commonwealth bank. Seriously!!! They have no idea, no wonder people are prepared to pay $10 a month to watch quickflix, san presto and Netflix – everyone is sick to death of the ads. I know a lot of my friends wouldn’t even look at channel 10 because they know they will be bombarded with ads – again no bloody idea!!!
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Ben – that just doesn’t stack up.
As someone who appreciates the fact that Ten hasn’t gone overboard with ads on its online platform, I just had to double check. So after checking tenplay….
Australian Survivor, ep 1.
Starts with 2 ads (not the same ad)
1 x 15 sec, 1 x 30 sec
After 21 mins (yes 21 mins), the first ad break in the show (4 ads, looks like 2 x 15 sec, and 2 x 30 sec. Again no repeated ads).
So that’s about 2 mins of ads all up. Far far less than commercial TV.
Same with ep 2, apart from the fact that the first ad break in the show is at the 15 min mark, due to a shorter show.
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