Paris attacks drive viewers to news as Ten’s Princess Mary telemovie pulls 929,000
The tragic events in Paris which unfolded on Saturday morning in Australia drove huge audiences to news bulletins across the weekend as people sought more information.
Sky News, which carried the UK Sky News’ coverage of events as they unfolded, saw a huge surge in its audience on Saturday with the third and fourth most-watched shows of the day on pay-TV with 80,000 viewers nationally, while Nine News’ evening bulletin was the most-watched thing on TV on the day grabbing 1.164m metro viewers while 965,000 watched Seven’s equivalent.
The attacks, which started just after 7am AEDST also drew people to the breakfast shows on TV with 310,000 watching Seven’s Weekend Sunrise and 337,000 tuned in to Nine’s Weekend Today. As the morning progressed the an extended Sunrise into rolling news, on Seven, grabbed 327,000 viewers and Nine’s Mornings pulled in 354,000.
ABC World News pulled in 69,000 national viewers and CBS News was watched by 60,000.
Looking at Sunday Ten’s telemovie delving into the story of Australia’s Mary Donaldson, Mary: The Making of a Princess, pulled in 929,000 metro viewers at 8.30pm according to OzTam overnight metro ratings.
While it didn’t manage to break the 1m barrier, it did win its timeslot outrating both Seven and Nine’s special news bulletins.
Nine’s News Special – A World on Edge, airing from 8pm-9pm, which was delayed in NSW and Vic because of the cricket overrunning, saw Peter Overton and Michael Usher talk to a line-up of people from around the world who have had first hand experience with terrorists and pulled in 436,000 viewers in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane.
Seven’s News Special, which also aired from 8pm to 9pm, grabbed 770,000 metro viewers.
In the demographics, Mary: The Making of a Princess was the third most-watched show amongst viewers aged 16-39, the fourth most-watched show amongst viewers aged 18-49 and the third most-watched program amongst viewers aged 25-54.
Earlier in the evening, Ten’s The Biggest Loser Families was watched by 675,000 in the 7.30pm timeslot, up on last week’s audience of 557,000.
Seven’s Sunday Night, airing at 7pm, grabbed 1.085m metro viewers while Beach Cops, airing directly after at 8pm, was watched by 872,000.
Nine’s coverage of day three of the cricket test between Australia and New Zealand in Perth saw 775,000 tune in for session one, with the audience growing to 879,000 for session two. The final session pulled in 1.097m.
Nine won the night with an audience share of 21 per cent, ahead of Seven’s share of 18.5 per cent. Ten settled for third place with a share of 17.1 per cent as the ABC slipped below the 10 per cent mark with a share of 9.4 per cent.
News was again the most-watched programming last night, with Nine News pulling in 1.170m and Seven News grabbing a metro audience of 1.151m.
On pay TV, the live broadcast of Holly Holm take on, and defeat, Ronda Rousey was watched by 55,000 national viewers from 9.30am on Fox Sports 3.
SoHo’s A Place to Call Home pulled in 178,000 national viewers.
Data OzTAM Pty Limited 2015. The Data may not be reproduced, published or communicated (electronically or in hard copy) in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of OzTAM.
You need to be careful in ascribing ratings to programs on days when so much programming has been pre-empted.
For example ABC World News and CBS News did not air on Sky locally on Saturday.
And Beach Cops did not air at 8pm Sunday on Seven. It was an hour long Paris news special.
But the graphs look pretty.
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ABC News24 did a very good job at covering the event. Their anchors were (unusually) switched on and did an excellent job. A rating of 1.5 seems to reflect oversight by viewers.
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Myriad, it’s a shame that the same can’t be said about the CNN reporter who interviewed Bataclan survivors John Leader and his 12 yo son, Oscar.
Young Oscar was asked by the reporter had he ever seen a dead body before, and then asked him to describe the carnage around him. Clearly, Oscar was traumatised by his experience.
Hang your head in shame, CNN.
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Amazing that the Princess Mary telemovie can win it’s slot with less than a million viewers.
Who remembers when shows like this used top get 2 million viewers when our population was much smaller?
Just shows with fragmentation, that success can now be attributed to a show that almost 22 million did NOT watch.
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