Breakfast and news programs surge on last year’s Good Friday figures by as much as 98%
The ongoing COVID-19 crisis and associated lockdown measures have consumers increasingly turning to television news and current affairs programs, with the free-to-air networks experiencing bumps across the board.
On Good Friday last year, Nine’s breakfast program Today, then with a line-up of Deb Knight, Georgie Gardner and Tom Steinfort, slipped to an audience of 176,000 metro viewers. This year, with the Easter weekend falling slightly earlier and more people staying home, Today had an audience of 213,000 – a 21% climb.
All the networks’ news offerings are being bolstered by consumers keen for COVID-19 information
Nationally, Today climbed from 254,000 to 316,000, up 24.4%.
Analogy: When you go from 100 viewers to 198. It’s still only 198 viewers.
% increases from a low base is amateur hour.
The world we live in is on its knees as every country fight this killer virus. Surely viewing figures across all free to air commercial and non would be well up, as would Netflix, Stan and foxtel year on year. It’s out of official ratings at the moment and content is very average repeats etc but news and breakfast viewing as people turn 2 tv to see what the previous day bought is no surprise surely. With self isolation rules in place your tv can be a source of filling time. Reckon when radio ratings come out listening will be up as well probably more am band with news slant but music is a nice relief to most.