Seven’s decision to timeshift coverage of the Bathurst 1000 to accommodate advertising may have infuriated motor racing fans, but the channel still dominated Sunday’s programming.
Seven had the four biggest rating audiences of the day, according to preliminary overnight ratings from OzTam.
The podium for the Supercars race delivered 1.316m viewers, while the race itself averaged 1.038m.
The X Factor also performed slightly better for Seven, delivering 1.224m – up on last Sunday’s 1.115m.
ADVERTISEMENT
The biggest audience of the day – 1.621m – went to Seven News.
Meanwhile, despite Seven’s delayed coverage of Bathurst overrunning into the start time for the Japanese Grand Prix, Formula Onewas still One’s biggest audience of the day, delivering 315,000 viewers.
Ten’s late primetime coverage of the Commonwealth Games averaged 703,000 while its early primetime coverage averaged 673,000. However, the coverage was also simulcast with One.
A spokesman for Seven told Mumbrella: “We had a choice: miss laps or not. We made the right decision to cover the laps and not miss a thing. The closeness of the race, the reduced number of safety cars in today’s race, advertising commitments and our desire that viewers not miss a single moment of the race led us to time-shift our coverage. Our objective was viewers not miss a moment of action. It wasn’t a plan to schedule against an F1 race, we had a great race and made the decision not to take out laps with commercial breaks as Ten does with F1.”
Sunday’s top rating shows:
- Seven News Seven 1.621m
- V8s on Seven: Bathurst 1000 – Podium Seven 1.316m
- Sunday Night Seven 1.291m
- The X Factor Seven 1.224m
- ABC News Update ABC 1.068m
- 60 Minutes Nine 1.048m
- V8s on Seven: Bathurst 1000 – The Race Seven 1.038m
- Poirot ABC 1.032m
- Nine News Nine 1.028m
- ABC News ABC 0.952m
- V8s on Seven: Bathurst 1000 – Wrap-up Seven 0.933m
- Last Chance to See ABC 0.931m
- Bones Seven 0.801m
- V8s on Seven: Bathurst 1000 – Final Countdown Seven 0.799m
- Hot Pursuit Nine 0.761m
(Bathurst figures likely to change due to overrun)
Sunday’s share:
- Seven: 24.3%
- ABC1: 17.1%
- Nine: 17.0%
- Ten: 16.4%
- GO!: 5.8%
- One: 5.0%
- SBS1: 4.4%
- 7mate: 2.8%
- Gem: 2.3%
- 7TWO: 1.6%
- SBS2: 1.6%
- ABC2: 0.8%
- ABC3: 0.5%
- ABC News 24: 0.4%