Doctor Blake says goodbye to the ABC with rare ratings win

Doctor Blake’s final outing with the ABC helped the broadcaster to its first win of the official ratings year on Sunday night.

The ABC announced back in March that it was axing The Doctor Blake Mysteries, with Sunday’s telemovie its last episode.

Doctor Blake will now move to Seven

But a fortnight ago, Seven revealed that it had rescued Doctor Blake, commissioning a series of telemovies to air during 2018. The cast including lead Craig McLachlan will move across with the program.

Last night saw 891,000 metro viewers tune in for the final episode on the ABC, according to the preliminary overnight ratings from OzTam. Including regional audiences, the number rose to 1.339m national viewers.

The ABC also had the top show of the night, with 978,000 metro viewers tuning in for British drama comedy Doc Martin. The national number was 1.455m.

The ABC’s metro audience share was 20.6% , beating Seven’s 19.5% and Nine’s 17.9%. Ten was a distant fourth with 7.4%, while SBS was on 4.6%.

Ten’s share was particularly dire in Brisbane, where it fell to 6.1%, putting it behind Seven’s secondary channel 7Mate which averaged 7.9% in the city.

Seven’s best performing entertainment show was The Wall, which rated 669,000 (and 1.088m nationally) while Nine’s Family Food Fight rated 570,000 (770,000 nationally). Ten’s best performer was Bull, which averaged 269,000 and 416,000 nationally..

Seven News rated 901,000 while Nine News rated 862,000 and ABC News 858,000.

In the Sunday breakfast battle, the ABC’s Insiders was on 263,000 metro viewer,  Seven’s Weekend Sunrise was also on 263,000 and Nine’s Weekend Today on 214,000. Including regional audiences, Weekend Sunrise had 435,000 viewers nationally, while Insiders had 377,000.