Seven’s news investigation Murder in the Outback brings in over 1m metro viewers
The beginning of Seven’s four-part investigation into the 2001 disappearance of British backpacker Peter Falconio brought 1.033m metro viewers to Seven on Sunday night, making it the most-watched program in the 7pm timeslot.
Nationally, 1.645m watched 7NEWS Presents – Murder In The Outback: The Falconio & Lees Mystery, sitting it just behind Seven News as the most-watched of the night. Seven News delivered 1.237m metro and 1.835m national viewers at 6pm.
The series will investigate Falconio’s disappearance and the resulting conviction of Bradley John Murdoch. Teasers for the show promise never-before-seen original defence documents and question “What really happened on that night in the outback?”
Also at 7pm, Ten’s Masterchef Australia delivered 957,000 metro and 1.218m national viewers, while Nine’s The Voice brought in 749,000 and 1.027m nationally.
In the key advertising demographics of 16-39s, 18-49s and 25-54s, Masterchef was the most-watched, followed by Nine News. Seven News took third spot in the 16-39s, while Murder in the Outback held third in the two older demos. Nine News delivered 1.138m metro viewers and 1.522m nationally overall.
The win for Sunday night went to Seven with a network audience share of 30.6% above Nine’s 27.3%, Ten’s 19.1% and ABC’s 15.9%. Seven’s primary channel held an audience share of 24.8%, while Nine secured 21.0% and Ten 15.2%. ABC held 12.5%. The most-watched multi-channel was 10 Bold with 2.6%.
Having watched the first episode of Murder in the Outback I was left with memories of what was done to Lindy Chamberlain. Isn’t this programme doing the same thing.
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Still waiting for those world headlines (that never happened).
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Counted 5.17 minutes of show to over 4 minutes of ads. Pathetic
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My thoughts exactly.
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I totally agree. I gave up watching it with all the ads.
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This program shone a bright light on the idea of “beyond reasonable doubt”. It highlighted the many doubts and questions that many people still have relating to the events the night of July 14, 2001. It is certainly not an open-and-shut case. As a viewer, I found a lot of the key players in this case were dodgy and evasive, and all seemed to have something they were trying to hide. Murdoch was not the only dodgy one. Lees often seemed unwilling to commit to any train of thought and that often made her seem evasive, the police work and the forensics were also at times rather dodgy. It is one of those cases which just reeks of being corrupted by multiple people being evasive and untrustworthy for their own reasons. The police seemed to make a number of bad blunders and there was a strong suggestion that they are committed to covering these up. The former police detective seemed a bit evasive and guarded in her responses when questioned and I got the feeling that in her mind it was a “closed case”, so she was not willing to entertain any other evidence or possibilities. For these reasons, I doubt if any of us will ever know what really took place that night.
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