Oprah With Meghan and Harry delivers 1.366m viewers and a win to Ten
Ten’s acquisition of Oprah’s highly-anticipated interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry paid off last night, with the two hour special watched by an average audience of 1.366 million across the five capital cities.
Running from 7:30pm to 9:30pm, it was the pair’s first joint interview since they stepped down as senior royals at the start of last year. An impressive 1.78 million people nationally watched the wide-ranging conversation, during which Markle admitted she experienced suicidal thoughts during her time in England, and revealed that a member of the royal family had “concerns” about their son Archie’s skin colour before his birth (Markle is mixed race American).
Before the interview began, Oprah confirmed her questions had not been provided to Markle and Prince Harry in advance, no subjects were off-limits, and they were not being paid.
Last week, Ten announced it had won a bid for the rights to the lengthy interview, which aired on CBS a few hours earlier in the US and was internationally distributed by Ten’s owner, ViacomCBS. Its performance makes it Ten’s biggest special since 2011.
The interview was easily the most-watched program of the night, leading a slate that featured tough competition including Married at First Sight on Nine, which drew 804,000 metro viewers, and an episode of Four Corners called ‘Bursting the Canberra Bubble’, a follow up to last year’s ‘Inside the Canberra Bubble’ story. The episode examined the historical rape allegation against Attorney General Christian Porter – which Porter vehemently denies – and pulled a metro audience of 624,000.
Seven’s second night of Ultimate Tag, which launched on Sunday night to 447,000 metro viewers, was pushed out of the metro top 20 and had 260,000 metro viewers. Its national result was 442,000 – less than the metro audience it had the night before.
#TVRatings Mar8: 1.78 million Aussies tuned in to watch Oprah With Meghan & Harry. It was 10's biggest special since 2011. It was the #1 show & 10 Play's biggest non-sport live stream event ever.@Channel10AU & Network 10 were #1 across the night, up ⬆️178% & ⬆️102% week-on-week pic.twitter.com/dJMPMpySoc
— Paramount Australia & New Zealand (@ParamountANZ) March 8, 2021
Oprah With Meghan and Harry topped each of the three key advertising demographics, and delivered Ten a rare nightly win with a 29.9% network share, triumphing against Nine’s 26.9%, Seven’s 20.9%, and the ABC’s 16.5%.
Ten also led on a channel basis; Channel Ten had 24%, Channel Nine 21.2%, Channel Seven 13.9%, and ABC TV 13%.
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Brittney Rigby was Mumbrella's deputy managing editor - news and analysis. She left Mumbrella in April 2021.
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