Home & Away celebrates 30 years with 796,000 metro viewers
Seven’s soap opera Home & Away, which is celebrating its 30-year anniversary this January, returned to screens last night with 796,000 viewers across the five capital cities, according to OzTAM’s overnight preliminary metro ratings.
Home & Away is entering its 31st season
The show then fed into the premiere of My Kitchen Rules, which even though down on last year, still managed to beat Nine’s Married at First Sight.
Home & Away debuted on 17 January, 1988 and over 6,800 episodes have subsequently gone to air.
Sam Frost, who became a media personality after stints on The Bachelor, Bachelorette and one of 2Day FM’s ill-fated Sydney breakfast shows, is due to join the cast this year, however did not appear in last night’s episode.
The main television battle last night came directly after the soap opera, with Seven’s premiere of My Kitchen Rules up against Nine’s Married at First Sight, and the second episode of Ten’s I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.
My Kitchen Rules had 1.182m viewers for its first episode this year, down from last year’s 1.309m. In 2016, its seventh season had 1.576m for its premiere.
Nine’s Married had 912,000 metro viewers, up from 2017’s premiere episode which pulled 820,000. The year before, the show’s season three premiere had 805,000.
Last night’s Married at First Sight episode debuted with a national average audience of 1.277m (5 City 912,000 Reg 365,000) Overall #MAFS metro audience was up 10.5% on its 2017 debut pic.twitter.com/tdtkCCqtya
— Nine Comms (@9Comms) January 29, 2018
Ten’s I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, which saw Australian tennis star Bernard Tomic grappling with whether or not to leave the jungle, had 858,000 metro viewers. Last year, episode two of the celebrity contest had 959,000 viewers.
Later in the evening, Seven’s top-rating drama The Good Doctor returned with 1.095m viewers on Seven.
Seven also won the news battle with 1.108m, compared to Nine’s 946,000.
The key advertising demographics spread their love between Married and MKR. In 16-39s, Married was ahead, with MKR in second and I’m A Celebrity in third, where as in the 18-49s and 25-54s, MKR was on top.
Overall, Seven won the night with a 25.6% average audience share. Nine had 20.8%, Ten 13.6%, ABC 10.4% and SBS 4.4%.
