Seven and Ten unveil new comedies, but ABC’s Q&A proves more popular on Thursday night’s TV
The premiere of Ten’s How to Stay Married and Seven’s Orange is the New Brown both pulled more than 400,000 viewers, but no non-news program was more popular than ABC’s Q&A.
From 9pm, Ten’s new show with Peter Helliar and Lisa McCune, How to Stay Married, premiered with 508,000 metro viewers. It had a higher audience than Seven’s new comedy sketch, Orange is the New Brown, which premiered with 422,000 metro viewers at 8:30pm.
The programs, which pulled national audiences of 723,000 and 677,000 respectively, received mixed reviews on Twitter.
#Channel7….. omg!!! Orange is the new brown is killing me!!! So damned funny!!! Love it!!😂
— jane (@crazyjane1) November 8, 2018
So orange is the new brown does a skit about an Indian getting surgery to be white and suddenly he’s a dumb lazy alcoholic n that’s okay but if aussies did a skit with black face and smelling like curry, bobbing our heads around and we driving a taxi all hell would break loose
— rhiannon (@its_tricky) November 8, 2018
https://twitter.com/bentyers/status/1060645864874504192
https://twitter.com/MatthewCorry78/status/1059754251553918976
However the most watched non-news program of Thursday night came from the ABC, with 666,000 metro viewers tuning in to see former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s speak for the first time since the leadership spill in August.
Turnbull appeared on ABC’s Q&A at 8pm last night, attracting his biggest audience from Melbourne – 222,000. Nationally, he pulled an audience of 956,000.
His appearance attracted a larger audience than a controversial episode of Ten’s Bachelorette Australia, Nine’s RBT and Seven’s Home and Away.
Ten’s Bachelorette Australia, which ran from 7:30pm, captured 605,000 metro viewers, up almost 100,000 viewers from last week. It also was the top program across all key advertising demographics – the 16-39s, 18-49s and 25-54s, according to OzTAM’s overnight preliminary ratings.
Nine’s RBT, which ran from 8pm, achieved 429,000 metro viewers and Seven’s Home and Away averaged 513,000.
At 6pm, the news battle was won by Seven overall, with 850,00 metro viewers, while Nine News pulled in 768,000. ABC News averaged 667,000.
Overall, Nine won the night with a main channel share of 173.%, beating Seven’s 16,6% and Ten’s 14.3%. ABC and SBS pulled shares of 14.1% and 4.3%. However from a network perspective, Seven nabbed the win from Nine, with a total audience share of 27.6%. Nine Network achieved a 27.2% share, well ahead of ABC Network’s 19.8% and Ten’s 18.7%. SBS Network managed a 6.7% share.
