The Commonwealth Games and Royal Wedding help Seven to 2018 ratings lead
Seven’s coverage of The Royal Wedding and The Commonwealth Games, combined with sports like AFL and The 2018 Melbourne Cup, helped the channel dominate the 2018 ratings battle.
The Royal Wedding was one of the highest performing shows of 2018
According to numbers provided by OzTAM, the most watched program of 2018 was the presentations for the AFL Grand Final between the West Coast Eagles and Collingwood, which pulled a metro audience of 2.616m.
The Royal Wedding was one of the highest performing shows of 2018
The game itself was watched by 2.615m across Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. In Melbourne alone, 1.253m watched the match.
Seven had a number of other sports programs in the top 20 this year, including the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony, watched by 2.037m and the 2018 Melbourne Cup Carnival race, with 1.908m metro viewers.
The Australian Open Men’s Final between Roger Federer and Marin Cilic was the 15th most watched show of the year, with 1.739m metro viewers.
Unlike last year, Seven also had an entertainment program to make the top 20, with My Kitchen Rules’ winner announcement capturing 1.637m. But one of its biggest successes was the Royal Wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, which achieved a metro audience of 1.993m for the ceremony, and 1.772m for arrivals.
Nine’s most watched program of the year was the first match of the NRL State of Origin, with 2.347m metro viewers. It was also the most watched program across all key advertising demographics for the year, according to the consolidated figures from OzTAM. But Nine had more entertainment shows in the top 20, including The Block, and a number of Married at First Sight episodes.
SBS also made the top 20 shows this year, thanks to its coverage of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The match between France and Australia achieved 1.667m, while the Australia vs Denmark match managed 1.664m. Ten and the ABC did not have shows in the top 20 for the year.
OzTAM’s top 20 shows of 2018
The most watched multi-channel show of the year was a Tuesday night AFL match on 7mate, which captured 474,000 metro viewers. Of the top 20 programs of the year for the multi-channels, 17 were from 7mate.
Most of the programming was sports-related, including the 2018 Winter Olympic Games, Sunday AFL, and The Brisbane International. ABCKids/Comedy made up the rest of the top 20.
On subscription television, the most watched program was the AFL preliminary final between Richmond and Collingwood, with an audience of 552,000 nationally. Fox Cricket came in behind the AFL match, with 476,000 viewers watching game three of the Twenty/20 match between Australia and India.
Seven won the year from a total share perspective, with an average of 20.8%. Nine’s share was 18.8%, while Ten’s average share for the year was 12.2%. That was just ahead of ABC’s 12.1%, but comfortably in front of SBS’ 5.5%.
When adding in the multi-channels, Seven Network was helped by 7mate’s success, with an average share of 30.7%. Nine Network’s share was 27.2% and Network Ten’s was 17.4%. ABC Network and SBS Network finished with average shares of 16.9% and 7.8% for the calendar year.
