An average metro audience of 690,000 watched Nick Kyrgios’ nail biting, five set defeat against France’s Ugo Humbert last night.
The match, which began at 7:15pm and lasted three and a half hours, attracted a national audience of 925,000 and peaked at 934,000 capital city viewers and 1.34 million nationally.
“If you were in my head, I was actually just thinking about all the shit I was gonna cop if I lost that match,” Kyrgios said in a post-match on court interview.
Kyrgios now progresses to the third round
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He will now progress to face world number three player Dominic Thiem in the third round of the Australian Open.
TV measurement company OzTam has begun splitting the night matches into sessions for ratings purposes, in response to an average audience across four to five hours of tennis being pitted against one to one and a half hour prime-time shows.
However, last night, primetime didn’t perform best for Nine’s Australian Open. Instead, the second session, which stretched from 9pm to 10:29pm, was the most-watched, with 704,000 metro viewers as the Kyrgios match heated up. That session topped the 16-39s and 18-49s advertising demographics, while Nine News prevailed among people aged 25-54.
The first Australian Open session drew 625,000 metro viewers from 7:15pm to 8:59pm, and the late time slot – 10:30pm to 11:59pm – had 420,000. Meanwhile, 311,000 metro viewers tuned in to the 15 minutes of pre-game coverage from 7pm.
Nine did not have much competition in the evening. Seven aired Home and Away at 7pm (510,000 metro viewers), followed by Ambulance: Code Red at 7:30pm (366,000) and The Bay at 8:30pm.
And Ten put up two episodes of chef Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Easy Meals for Every Day at 7:30pm and 8pm (268,000).
The strongest challenge came from the ABC, which had 633,000 metro viewers for its evening news, 598,000 for Hard Quiz, 507,000 for The Weekly With Charlie Pickering, 495,000 for 7:30, and 352,000 for Aftertaste.
That run of programming gave the public broadcaster a 17.3% network share, ahead of Ten’s 15.9%. On a channel basis, the ABC had 12.5% to Ten’s 8.2%.
Nine easily won the night with a 34% network share, compared to Seven’s 24%. Channel Nine sat on a 26.2% channel share, while Channel Seven finished on 16.5%.
10 Bold continued its streak at the top of the multi-channel pile on 4.3%.