SBS beats Ten on Saturday night as networks do battle with chocolate programming
The Saturday night television battle has seen SBS come out with a larger audience share than Ten’s primary channel. SBS finished the night with an 7.3% share, while Ten had just 6.3%.
The other commercial networks, meanwhile, both screened different film adaptations of Roald Dahl’s 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Seven’s choice of the original 1971 flick, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder, was victorious, with a metro audience of 244,000, and a national total of 365,000. Nine’s screening of the 2005 adaptation with Johnny Depp, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, had 191,000 metro viewers and 270,000 in total.
Viewers preferred the original film last night over its 2005 remake
SBS also chose chocolate programming, with The Chocolate Factory: Inside Cadbury Australia screening in prime time. For ratings purposes, it was split into three parts. Part one had a metro audience of 222,000 (328,000 national), part two slipped to 204,000 (318,000 national), and part three concluded with 224,000 (307,000 national).
Ten steered clear of the Easter theme, and instead aired repeats of Bondi Rescue, as well as the local and international iterations of observational documentary Ambulance.
One episode of Bondi Rescue had a metro audience of 164,000 and a national total of 225,0000, while the other had 226,000 in the cities and 312,000 in total. The episode of Ambulance Australia had 219,000 metro viewers, which climbed to 318,000 with the addition of regional viewers, while the UK episode had 204,000 in the cities, but the same national total of 318.000.
The most-watched entertainment program of the night was the ABC’s Death in Paradise, which attracted 974,000 in the cities and 1.436m in total.
It was, however, news programs which were most popular on Saturday night.
Seven News had a chart-topping metro audience of 1.138m, and a national total of 1.739m.
Nine News won in Sydney and Melbourne but was behind overall with a metro audience of 1.098m and a total of 1.457m.
ABC News had 974,000 and 1.436m.
Earlier in the evening, Ten’s 10 News First had 385,000 and 561,000.
These figures are all significant improvements on Easter Saturday last year. Seven News was up 47% from its 2019 figure of 769,000 metro viewers, and national figure of 1.178m.
In the metro markets, Nine News’ Easter Saturday figure was up 55.5% from last year’s 706,000, while nationally it was up 50.1%.
ABC News, meanwhile was up 64% from its 2019 metro figure of 594,000. Nationally, it was up 58%.
And 10 News First was up 45.8% in the cities and 49% in total.
In the primary channel battle, it was ABC’s night last night. It finished with a 17.1% share, ahead of Seven’s 15.9% and Nine’s 14.9%. SBS was able to beat Ten with 7.3% and 6.3% respectively.
SBS came out on top of Ten last night
The addition of multi-channels, however, particularly the strength of Ten’s Bold with a 5.0% share, shook up the rankings. Nine was first with a network share of 26.3%, Seven second on 25.5%, and the ABC third on 24.0%. Ten jumped into fourth on 13.7%, while the SBS network had 10.6%.
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Saturday TV ratings
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