Ten’s The Cube launches to 567,000 metro viewers
Ten’s new prime-time game show format, The Cube, premiered last night to 567,000 metro viewers, behind Married at First Sight’s third episode, which drew 891,000 metro viewers to Nine, and the ABC’s Hard Quiz, which had a capital city audience of 584,000 at 8pm.
However, the Andy Lee-fronted format did beat Seven in the key time slot, with the latter’s offering of Ambulance: Code Red attracting an average metro audience of just 255,000 from 7:30-8:30pm.
Earlier this week, Lee told Mumbrella of his hopes for the first episode’s performance: “Well, obviously we expect three million Australians will have something else on. So we can’t be greedy and go for the full 25 million.
“So we’re just left with a safe number of 22 mil, I’d be surprised if we don’t get that.”
Ten said it was pleased with The Cube’s opening night, the biggest game show launch since 2014.
“The Cube Australia is off to a great start,” a spokesperson said.
“This is a show that allows the whole family to yell at the television together. We have lots of great contestants joining us in the coming weeks to take on the challenge of The Cube, guided by brilliant host Andy Lee.”
MAFS’ domination – it came in only behind Seven News on 934,000 – continued among the key demographics (it topped all three, 16-39s, 18-49s, and 25-54s, followed by The Cube) and nationally, with an audience of 1.191 million. Its national figure put it well ahead of Hard Quiz’s 882,000, The Cube’s 782,000, and Ambulance: Code Red’s 456,000.
The eighth season of Nine’s successful reality format premiered on Monday night to 964,000 metro viewers, and jumped to 992,000 for its second episode.
The third episode’s performance last night was enough to secure another win for Nine. A channel share of 24.7% and network share of 33.1% easily top Seven’s 14.3% and 21.8%, respectively.
On a channel basis, the ABC’s programming – including Hard Quiz and The Weekly With Charlie Pickering, which was watched by 474,000 metro viewers – had a 12.2% share, beating Ten on 11.8%.
The network shares flipped the two networks rankings though, with the ABC landing on 16.6% and Ten jumping up to 19.8% thanks to 10 Bold’s continued strong performance among the multi-channels, sitting ahead of the pack on 4.2%.
While MAFS snuck ahead of most news programming to finish in second place among metro audiences, Seven News at 6:30 was close behind on 875,000, followed by Nine News (858,000), Nine News at 6:30 (857,000), A Current Affair (676,000), and ABC News (654,000).
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Brittney Rigby was Mumbrella's deputy managing editor - news and analysis. She left Mumbrella in April 2021.
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topics
Ambulance: Code Red
Andy Lee
Hard Quiz
MAFS
Married at First Sight
Nine
Seven
Ten
The Cube
The Weekly with Charlie Pickering
TV ratings
