Michael Usher’s first Seven News bulletin delivers big win over Nine in Sydney
Michael Usher’s first news bulletin for Seven since he left Nine’s 60 Minutes has delivered an instant win for the network.
Usher presented Friday night’s 6pm bulletin for Seven News and won the timeslot for the network by the biggest margin since the Olympics were on air.
Usher: Instant win for Seven News
According to preliminary overnight metro ratings from OzTam, Seven’s bulletin averaged an audience of 225,000 viewers in Sydney between 6 and 6.30pm.
Nine News, which is presented by Georgie Gardner, rated 196,000.
The winning margin of 29,000 is the largest for Seven since the Olympics, which helped boost all of Seven’s shows.
Usher grew his winning margin during the second half of the program, with the 6.30pm to 7pm slot rating 224,000 to Nine News’ 192,000, a margin of 32,000.
It was also the first time in five weeks that Seven News beat Nine News in Sydney on a Friday night.
Seven announced that it had lured Usher from 60 Minutes in August. Usher replaced Melissa Doyle, who began to read the bulletin after leaving Sunrise three years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIJ-4-yUfb0
Doyle will continues to present Seven’s Sunday Night in what the network says is an “expanding role” which will include her reporting as well as hosting.
Seven News was also the most watched show across the country, with a five city audience of 894,000 from 6-6.30pmpm. Nine News rated 791,000. Ten’s best performing show on Friday was The Living Room which rated 509,000.
Seven won the ratings for the day, with a peaktime share of 22.3%, well ahead of Nine’s 13.9% and Ten’s 12.6%.
Meanwhile, Seven’s Sunrise beat Nine’s Today by 306,000 to 289,000. The win means that Sunrise won the week against Today. With six weeks left of the 40 week official ratings year, Today needs just one more weekly victory to end more than a decade of Sunrise ratings dominance. Meanwhile, on average national audience, Sunrise remains well ahead with an average of 544,000 to 476,000 for the official ratings period.
And with just one day left of the ratings week, Seven and Nine are both on a cumulative share of 19%, meaning that tonight’s winner will also win the ratings week.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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I’m with Waleed on journalism being a trade rather than a profession because day in, day out you’re out there just trying to shed a bit more light on what’s really going on and upholding the three most important journalistic tenets: accuracy, accuracy and accuracy. And that applies whether you’re breaking Watergate or reporting on the local council meeting. But it’s interesting that journalism shares with the legal and medical professions – as well as with the priesthood – a crucial ethic: privilege. Attorney/client, doctor/patient, the sanctity of the confessional and the protection of a source. That ethic not only reflects journalism’s power and importance, but the fact that it’s more than just a job. Hopefully, there will always be a journalism – somehow, somewhere – that is more than just a job, but as Waleed astutely points out, at the moment there is plenty to be worried about.
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