SBS’s drama-comedy The Family Law drew 366,000 metro viewers for its on-air debut after the public broadcaster ran a seeding campaign on Facebook in an attempt to generate online buzz around the show.
The cast of The Family Law.
It will be seen as a reasonable result for the show based on author Benjamin Law’s memoir, although it is unclear whether the move to post the full first episode on Facebook over the weekend helped or hurt the numbers. The video drew more than 140,000 views for more than 30 seconds, with more than 22,000 people watching the full show.
Ten’s Big Bash still topped the night with 868,000 viewers on the main channel and One to see the first session as Brisbane Heat’s Chris Lynn smashed five sixes in an over to help his beleaguered team thrash the Melbourne Stars. The second session managed 910,000 viewers despite an early collapse from the Stars in their innings.
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However The Family Law could not match the hit of last year for SBS, Struggle Street, which had 935,000 viewers after generating a considerable amount of media heat last May.
Facebook’s head of tech, entertainment, comms Jason Juma-Ross told Mumbrella they were pleased with the result and believed the platform has helped boost the traditional TV audience.
Facebook and SBS measured differences in response between those who had viewed the Family Law premiere and those who had not,” said Juma-Ross.
“People who had watched at least part of the premiere were much more likely to be aware of the series. In fact, Facebook observed a 19 point lift in content awareness among those who had seen the video compared to Facebook users who were in a control group and had not been served the campaign.”
SBS also noted that the show had attained a free to air share of 9.6% per cent in metro areas and 6.8% in regional areas with SBS marketing boss Jo McAllister earlier this week signalling they were keen to continuing experimenting with seeding content on social media.
In news Seven won the 6pm bulletin with 975,000 viewers at 6pm compared with 945,000 for Nine. In the 6.30pm bulletin Seven was beaten with 867,000 compared with 915,000.
In the main channel audience share Ten won the night with 20.8 per cent, Seven had 15.1 per cent, Nine had 14.8 per cent, the ABC had 12.9 per cent while SBS had 5.5 per cent.