News programming dominates TV viewing for first Friday of summer
News and current affairs dominated Australian television viewing on Friday, during an evening in which no program came close to a million metro viewers.
Six of the ten most watched programs were from the news and current affairs genre, with Seven News topping the night with an average of 814,000 viewers, according to preliminary overnight ratings from OzTam.
Nine News was a distant second with 739,000 viewers. However, it beat Seven News in Melbourne and Brisbane.
Seven maintained its lead in the 6.30pm slot, with the second half of the news bulletin or local episodes of Today Tonight, depending on state, accumulating an average metro audience of 736,000.
Just behind was the 6.30pm portion of Nine News, which rated 725,000.
Seven’s Better Home and Gardens, which rated 677,000 was the best performing non-news show.
ABC News was sixth, with an audience of 581,000
Ten’s best performer was British chat show The Graham Norton Show which rated 379,000, 13th for the night.
Seven won the night with a 21.1% audience share, ahead of Nine’s 18% and the ABC’s 13.4%. Ten was fourth with 11.2%.