Seven wins tenth straight week of ratings war as annual battle hits quarter way mark

Tim Burrowes

May 1, 2016 1:59

Seven has reached the quarter time point of the television ratings year by clocking up a tenth consecutive weekly win over Nine.

Thanks in part to the final episodes of My Kitchen Rules, Seven cruised to victory for the week over Nine with a share of 23.6% of last week’s free-to-air evening audience, compared to Nine’s 17.7%. Meanwhile, Ten finished behind the ABC with 10.5% compared to 13%.

Because of summer and easter holidays, the official ratings period only runs for 40 weeks per calendar year. Last week was Seven’s tenth win in a row since the official ratings year kicked off on February 7.

Seven also won Saturday night’s ratings battle with a share of 19.4% to Nine’s 15.3%, the ABC’s 14.4% and Ten’s 9.4%.

And Seven won the multichannel week with a share across Seven, 7Two, 7Mate and 7Flix of 33%. Nine, Go, Gem and 9Life clocked up 25.9%.

Because of the growing strength of ABC2, Ten was beaten into fourth place by the national public service broadcaster. ABC, ABC2, ABC3 and ABC News 24 clocked up 18.1% while Ten languished on 16.3%.

According to the preliminary overnight ratings from OzTam, the most watched program of Saturday across the five city metro was Seven News with 933,000 viewers.

Meanwhile, the most watched program in Melbourne on Saturday was Seven’s AFL: Saturday Night football featuring Geelong vs Gold Coast which rated 273,000. The afternoon game of Melbourne vs St Kilda rated 128,000 in the city.

Meanwhile in Adelaide, yesterday night’s Richmond vs Port Adelaide AFL game was the most watched program of the day with 134,000 viewers.

The afternoon AFL clash between Adelaide and Fremantle rated 99,000 for Seven in Adelaide and 117,000 in Perth.

In the morning timeslot, the most watched show of the day – with an average audience of 297,000 – was Seven’s Weekend Sunrise. It finished just ahead of Nine’s Weekend Today on 293,000.

Tonight sees another key moment in the ratings year with Ten kicking off the eighth series of cookery contest Masterchef at 7.30pm and Nine launching its music talent show The Voice at 7pm. Seven will be airing a 100 minute episode of House Rules from 7pm.

Masterchef series eight Gary Mehigan, Matt Preston, George Calombaris

Masterchef: Returns for the eighth time tonight

Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.