Ninja Warrior and State of Origin decider give Nine a weekly ratings win
Nine had a decisive win this week in the TV ratings battle, thanks largely to the success of Australian Ninja Warrior and the third State of Origin match.
Australian Ninja Warrior: Ratings smash
Despite Seven closing in on a yearly win in the headline measure of metro all-people audience, Nine won the week with an audience share of 25.8%, ahead of Seven’s 18.5%, Ten’s 11.4%, ABC’s 9.8% and SBS’ 5.6%.
All programs in the top five for the week screened on Nine. The most-watched show across the metro markets was the third State of Origin match, which had a metro audience of 2.497m – making it the most-watched show of 2017 so far.
In second place for the week was the Sunday night launch of Australian Ninja Warrior, which had 1.676m metro viewers. Ninja Warrior’s Monday episode was in third place with 1.617m. Next up was Tuesday’s Ninja Warrior with 1.488m tuning in.
Fifth place for the week was the pre-match program for State of Origin, also on Nine, with 1.388m.
Seven’s first appearance in the top Ten was Sunday night’s Seven News, which had 1.283m metro viewers. Nine News on Sunday was in seventh with 1.242m.
In eighth place for the week was the winner’s announcement segment of House Rules, which pulled 1.154m metro viewers, ahead of the post-match program for Nine’s State of Origin which had 1.137m.
The final program in the top 10 was a weekday episode of Seven News which had 1.038m.
State of Origin match three is now the most-watched show of 2017
The finale of House Rules, excluding the winner’s announcement, narrowly missed the top 10, coming in at 11th thanks to an audience of 1.027m.
Ten’s most-watched program for the week was Thursday’s episode of Masterchef, which came in at 15th with 895,000 metro viewers.
ABC’s most-watched program was 23rd-placed ABC News on Saturday evening, which had 731,000 tuning in.
With the addition of regional figures, the make-up of the top five was unchanged: State of Origin was in first (3.669m national viewers), followed by Australian Ninja Warrior’s launch episode (2.323m), Monday’s Ninja Warrior (2.291m), Tuesday’s Ninja Warrior (2.163m) and Origin’s pre-match programming (2.053m).
The success of Nine’s Ninja Warrior saw Seven delay the launch of its new program hosted by Shane Jacobson, Little Big Shots.
Angus Ross, director of programming for Seven told Mumbrella: “We want to screen Little Big Shots to the biggest audience possible and attempting to split the family audience with Ninja does not feel like a smart play.”
In other TV news this week, Ten announced comedian and The Project co-host Peter Helliar would host a new game show CRAM and revealed the premiere dates for season five of The Bachelor Australia and season two of Australian Survivor. The network also announced its morning show Studio Ten would be extended to three-and-a-half hours from 24 July.
Nine announced music awards program the ARIAs would return to the network after six years on Ten and also restructured its news operations in Darwin, with production moving to Brisbane.
A report into live TV viewing was also released this week, which revealed a 22% fall in viewing, taking it to its lowest point in four years.
The graphs below are provided by Nine and based on OzTAM data. They include data only for the free-to-air commercial networks Ten, Nine and Seven.
Ninja warrior is just it’s a knockout for millennials. But nice to see all these Insta bodies given another platform they can excel at showing off their hard work in. Also enjoy the forensic analysis of why so and so a competitor fell flat on their face. Show could do with more cackling Fiona Mcdonald and fat Queensland bloke. But that’s probably just me. Also for some reason I remember an old English sheepdog. Or that might have been a dream I once had.
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