Ninja Warrior premiere down 45% on last year, with 929,000 tuning in
Nine was unable to repeat its record-breaking ratings with Australian Ninja Warrior this time around, with season two premiering to an audience of 929,000, according to OzTAM’s preliminary overnight metro ratings.
Last year, the show was a ratings phenomenon, pulling in 1.68m for the premiere, and 2.145m for the last moments of the final episode three weeks later, which was, at the time, the only entertainment show of the year to crack the 2m mark.
The show’s 45% premiere decline, however, wasn’t enough to totally destabilise Nine, which won the evening with a main channel share of 21.7%. When Ninja Warrior premiered last year, the channel secured 28.7% of the audience.
The debut of season 2 of #NinjaWarriorAU last night drew an average national audience of 1.318m pic.twitter.com/iCuXVki7J1
— Nine Comms (@9Comms) July 8, 2018
Seven, with a main channel audience share of 20.7%, was unable to beat Nine, but it did have the most-watched show of the evening. Seven News topped the ratings ladder with a metro audience of 1.171m, ahead of Nine News’ 1.034m.
Seven’s reality franchise House Rules, which went head to head with Ninja Warrior, had 835,000, down from last week’s 915,000.
Ten’s Masterchef had 748,000, up from last week’s 718,000.
Its Sunday night current affairs offering, The Sunday Project, however, had just 233,000 for the first half hour, which jumped to 421,000 at 7pm leading into Masterchef.
Ten finished the night with a 12.3% audience share, ahead of ABC’s 11.7%.
The key advertising demographics were split, with Australian Ninja Warrior topping the 18 to 49s and 25 to 54s, but Masterchef taking out the younger 16 to 39s.
The ABC’s most-watched program was Jack Irish, which pulled an audience of 723,000, while its news offering had 717,000.
SBS finished the night on 6.1%.
The rankings slightly shifted however, once multi-channels were added to the mix.
Nine Network remained in first place (30.1%), and Seven in second (29.5%), however the ABC jumped to third with 16.7%, ahead of Ten Network’s 16.1%.
7mate was the most-watched multi-channel, with 4.4% of the audience, but the most-watched program on the multi-channels was ABC Kids’ Bananas In Pyjamas, which had 189,000. 7mate’s most-watched offering was Iron Man with 177,000.
SBS Network finished with 7.7%.
What a monumental ratings disaster for Nine, as in, coming from nearly 1.7 million on debut last year! That audience will surely only get lower, matching Seven’s Spartan? As MasterChef and House Rules have fixed, loyal audiences this year now. Sponsors must be unhappy, very unhappy. MasterChef even won the youngest audience.
Interesting days ahead.
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When will these networks learn…you can’t just poach audience from an established franchise. House Rules is nearly over – people now want to see it through. Masterchef is just over half-way through…die hard fans are still engrossed in that show too. 900,000 is still a good showing, but a 45% drop just looks REALLY bad. I imagine it would pick up in on demand though. Only problem is, they don’t promote those numbers…
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YES!!!! Roll on the next minus 55%, and let’s see it buried. Mindless over hyped crap.
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Monumental ratings disaster? It won the night on PPL 25-54.
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Why can’t ratings be announced as the true OzTAM figure. Which went from what to what? I’d like to see the real numbers in use.
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I don’t think there has ever been a bigger ratings drop off in the history of Aussie telly.
It’s the producers to blame. It just doesn’t hold up compared to the US version. I watched last night and found the whole production very sloppy.
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The numbers for a sunday night the Project should be better with Lisa on Board. Still not firing hope it works out for her given the move from 9.
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Instead of getting cranky at the overwhelming theme in the media today (Ninja Warrior’s disappointing performance on last year’s launch), actually look at it holistically. A dud. Viewers are not dumb. A genre is a genre.
By the way, only just pipped MasterChef in 25-54 / 18-49 and LOST 16-39.
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Wow the decline in the younger demos are particularly bad
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It wasn’t actually a bad rating at all.
Remember, last year, there was literally nothing on in that time slot to challenge it, unlike last night, and it still won by quite a margin against the non-news programs, like nearly 100,000 ahead of Masterchef.
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Far too early for my money to declare Ninja Warrior dead out of puff. I suspect Ninja Warrior, unlike its contestants, will pick up steam as it progresses, particularly with younger audiences.
Seems like some here are keen to put the race horse in the cart and send it off still neighing to the knackers before it has fully transpired; perhaps even vestedly so?
And it would be unwise to overestimate the collective IQ of Australian audiences, as much as we might think a program is lowest common denominator dribble…after all, Hey Hey ran for twenty seven years first time around.
Anyway I’m not about to sell my shares in my extensive portfolio of waxing businesses.
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They were spruiking numbers around 1.5 million to advertisers.
A big loss with plenty of make goods to come.
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Hi all I don”t know if you have noticed… I watched last night.. but I couldn’t help wonder where are the people, or should I say athletes displayed on the leader board (they finished), that are nowhere to be seen. Some it says by the board that they obviously did the course and finished. So not everyone is shown just the ones that mainly fall off? Interesting thought .
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Did you notice the leader board, people on there not even seen anywhere yet they completed the course? odd ?
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