Seven wins Sunday night thanks to news and cricket
Seven achieved a 20.9% share of the Sunday night free-to-air television audience, thanks to its news and current affairs coverage, and the second Test match between India and Australia.
Seven’s primary channel share was ahead of Nine’s 18.6%, ABC’s 10.9% and Ten’s 10%, while SBS fell below 5% to a 4.9% share of audience.
From a network perspective, Seven extended its lead, with its four multi-channels contributing to a 32.4% total average audience share. Nine Network and its three multi-channels had a share of 29.9%. ABC Network finished ahead of Network Ten for the night, with shares of 15.5% and 14.4%, and SBS Network’s share was 7.9%.
Seven will have a big focus on cricket this summer
Seven’s 6pm news bulletin was the most-watched program of the night, with a metro audience of 940,00 – its biggest audience coming from Melbourne. The news bulletin had bigger audiences than Nine in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, while Nine News took out Sydney – at 246,000.
Most of Seven’s success came from day three of the second Test between Australia and India, with session three averaging 833,000 metro viewers. Sessions one and two, which ran across the day, averaged 600,000 and 750,000 respectively, according to OzTAM’s preliminary overnight metro ratings. The average across the three sessions was 727,666 metro viewers.
Nationally, the three sessions averaged 877,000, 1.122m and 1.207m respectively.
Seven’s pre-game coverage managed 292,000 metro viewers and lunch captured 521,000. The cricket coverage also topped all key advertising demographics – the 16-39s, 18-49s and 25-54s.
On Saturday, the three sessions had metro audiences of 559,00, 706,000 and 692,000, while on Friday, those sessions averaged audiences of 346,000, 492,000 and 641,000.
By comparison, Fox Cricket had audiences of 419,000, 404,000 and 308,000 for the three sessions, according to national subscription figures. Its Fox Cricket programs ‘The Big Break’ and ‘Cricket360’ averaged 277,000 and 188,000.
Outside of news and sports-related shows, the most-watched program of the night was Nine’s David Attenborough – Blue Planet II, which averaged 442,000. Ten’s most-watched show was the Graham Norton Show, with a metro audience of 323,000 and ABC’s most-popular program was ABC News Sunday, with 554,000 metro viewers. Outside of news, the ABC’s most-watched show was Sherlock, with 304,000 metro viewers.
