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SMI: Nine and Seven both above 40 per cent as Ten squeeze worsens

Australia’s major two TV networks Seven and Nine have for the first time both simultaneously won a share of more than 40 per cent of the metro free to air advertising market.

The milestone comes at the expense of troubled third network Ten, which fell below a 20 per cent share for a second month running, according to the latest numbers from Standard Media Index.

As Ten’s share of the viewing audience has declined over the last three years, advertising revenue has followed.

The latest numbers on advertising revenue shows both the Seven and Nine networks performing strongly on revenue in May while Ten continued to languish on the back of poor TV ratings in March and April.

It is also the first time that Nine has had more than a 40 per cent revenue share in a normal ratings period, having only previously hit the milestone during summer cricket or the Olympics.

According to Standard Media Index data, last month saw the Nine Network hit 40.4 per cent, on the back of the success of The Voice, while its rival Seven also performed strongly with 41.6 per cent.

Meanwhile, the Ten Network continued to perform badly with just 18 per cent revenue, down from 20.9 per cent in the same period last year and 19.3 per cent last month.

Free to air revenue share:

  • Seven – 41.6% (down from 43.6% last month)
  • Nine – 40.4% (up from 37.1% last month)
  • Ten – 18% (down from 19.3% last month)

SMI bases its data on information supplied by the major media agencies.

A spokesman for Ten focused on recent improvements in some of its main franchises such as Masterchef.  “Since Easter, we have seen strong prime time audience growth on Ten compared with the preceding 2014 period,” said the Ten spokesman.

“MasterChef is up 20 per cent versus last year’s series…  that growth will take time to be reflected in revenue and revenue shares.”

Compared to the previous month, the overall advertising market was down 2.8 per cent to $628.3m. TV was down 1.3 per cent, although the metro TV market was up 1.8 per cent to $235.2m.

Both newspapers and magazines continued their double digit declines down 14.6 per cent and 16.1 per cent respectively, to $66.4m and $22.9m.

Radio was down 6.3 per cent to $44.8m while outdoor was down 1.3 per cent to $51.1m.

Cinema recorded a 36.9 per cent decline coming off the Easter boost with $3.9m in revenue.

Nic Christensen  

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