Media buyers on falling linear ratings and whether VOZ will actually change anything
A number of commercial tentpole programs have lost metro viewers in 2021 compared with last year. Mumbrella’s Zanda Wilson chats with Pearman Media’s Steve Allen, Magna’s Nick Durrant, Wavemaker’s Sarah Starkey and Nunn Media’s Chris Walton about whether it’s fair to compare 2020’s lockdown ratings with this year, if VOZ will change the game, and whether media agencies even care about overnight ratings.
Commercial network television’s major tentpole programs have, so far in 2021, failed to deliver similar results in OzTam’s linear TV ratings, when compared with 2020.
One of the biggest examples of drop-off comes with Ten’s MasterChef Australia, which regularly hit over one million metro viewers in 2020 and hasn’t gone anywhere close to that this year. The program premiered to 1.268 million across metro markets in 2020, but this year fell to 670,000 at launch.
Big Brother is another program currently airing that is yet to match its 2020 ratings. The program launched with 662,000 metro viewers this year watching the ‘arrival’, compared with 853,000 metro viewers last year.
