Melbourne Cup brings Seven one step closer to winning the year
A strong Tuesday driven by the Melbourne Cup helped Seven to a weekly audience share win, according to OzTAM’s overnight ratings.
Seven led throughout the week in cumulative ratings, eventually ending with a Sunday to Saturday share of 21%, ahead of Nine’s 17.2%.
The win puts Seven one step closer to winning the yearly ratings battle, which can be judged as the first station to 21 wins out of the 40 weeks that make up the official ratings year. Seven currently has 19 weekly ratings win to Nine’s 18.
However, the metric is not the only one, with others arguing the winner should be judged based on overall average audience.
Ten’s share for the week was 10/4%, putting it well behind ABC’s 14%.
Last week Nine won the ratings week, bringing the two stations neck and neck.
Last year, Seven had won the 2016 ratings battle before August was over.
Despite experiencing its lowest ever broadcast audience, Seven’s coverage of the Melbourne Cup race was the most watched program of the week with 1.815m metro viewers.
Outside of the Melbourne Cup, the next most watched programs of the week were Tuesday and Thursday’s episodes of Seven’s The Good Doctor, with 1.187m and 1.005m metro viewers respectively.
ABC’s airing of Doc Martin was the sixth most watched program of the week with 997,000 metro viewers.
Nine’s only entrant into the week’s top 20 was A Current Affair with 724,000 metro viewers.
None of Ten’s shows made the cut.
ABC News was the most watched program for Saturday night, securing an audience of 644,000 metro viewers.
The tables below are prepared by Nine based on Oztam data and exclude the non-commercial channels.
