Nine News claims early 2025 ratings win
Nine’s Sydney news director Michael Best has already popped the champagne bottle and claimed victory in the hotly contested 6pm ratings for 2025, despite only being midway through the year.
This week, Best sent out a congratulatory email to his team, and selected colleagues, celebrating the ratings win and applauding Nine’s “hard work, passion for excellence and drive to produce the best news service in Sydney.”
In the email, seen by Mumbrella, Best said “9News Sydney has claimed the 6PM ratings for 2025 – just over halfway through the survey year!”
“Last night, we reached 21 weekly wins. So far, our competitors have zero.”
The victory marks the 15th straight year that Nine has won the 6pm ratings in Sydney. In addition, the station’s 6pm viewership is up 8.9% on last year.
Nine sent out a separate release claiming victory across the five capital cities for the year, and in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.
Peter Overton at the 9News Sydney desk.
This early claim isn’t a new trend for Nine – a similar press release from 2018, sent out after week 21, crowed: “For the eighth consecutive year, Nine News Sydney can claim an early ratings victory in the highly competitive television news battle.”
Nationally, both Seven and Nine have claimed the overall TV ratings battle for the first half of the year.
Seven’s claim of victory highlighted its total TV commercial share of 41.4% between 6am and midnight, compared to Nine’s 40.5% share, and Ten’s 18.1%.
It said: “Seven was the most watched network in 15 of the 26 weeks in the first half and increased its 6.00am to midnight audience in all people, 25 to 54s, 16 to 39s and grocery shoppers. Every month, Seven reaches 17.2 million Australians nationally.”
Nine’s media release “cements first-half dominance” with the claim of being number one for total TV across Australia — with the important distinction that it includes prime-time viewing only (6pm-midnight) and public broadcasters.
By including ABC and SBS in its calculations, Nine commanded 29.6% of the total audience for the first half of 2025, compared to Seven’s 28.9%, Ten’s 14%, the ABC’s 18.7%, and SBS’ 8.8% of viewers. Nine also claims the “key demos” of people aged 25-54 and 16-39.
Mumbrella has reached out to Seven for comment on Nine’s claim of the 6pm ratings victory.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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I want to know how Ten’s new 6pm show is faring
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I can’t help but think that’s the height of arrogance. He’s working off a date matrix “5 day weekly wins” which is used by no advertising agency anywhere. These guys really are stuck in the dark ages celebrating winning low numbers vs low number wins. Childish actually. But what would I know, I’m just an advertiser. Mumbrella would be wise to call this out rather than echo it.
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