Underbelly fires up as George Negus struggles in the ratings
The first competitive Monday of the 2011 ratings battle saw Nine’s Underbelly telemovie Tell Them Lucifer Was Here top the night with an average audience of 1.377m while Ten’s 6PM With George Negus rated just under 0.4m, well below the network’s half million target.
Seven’s My Kitchen Rules was close behind with a 1.332m audience, according to preliminary overnight metro ratings from OzTam.
Meanwhile, Nine’s William Shatner comedy Shit My Dad Says was just the right side of 1m with 1.061m.
The gulf Ten faces in changing news consumption habits is underlined by the fact that while 6PM With George Negus rated 392,000 – 30th for the night – Seven News rated 1.248m and Nine News rated 1.186m.
In the advertiser friendly 16-39 demographic, Negus fared slightly better – 20th for the night with Seven News and Nine News 11th and 12th.
The birights spot for the program came in Brisbane, where it narrowly beat Nine News in the 16-39 demographic with 28,000 viewers to 27,000 viewers.
At 6.30pm, Ten’s audience faded to 372,000 for the state-based Evening News. However, sister channel Eleven had the best performing show of any digital channel in the 6.30pm slot with 356,000 tuning in for Neighbours.
Digital channels accounted for almost 20% of the free to air audience.
Ten attracted a share of just 12.9% for its main channel, while Nine won the night with 26.5%. Across the main and multichannels, Seven was narrowly on top.
In the breakfast slot, Seven’s Sunrise and Nine’s Today both made strong returns to the ratings season, pulling in audiences of 407,000 and 318,000 respectively.
Monday’s channel share:
- Nine: 26.5%
- Seven: 24.5%
- Ten: 12.9%
- ABC1: 12.8%
- 7TWO: 4.4%
- SBS1: 4.0%
- Eleven: 3.5%
- 7mate: 3.2%
- GO!: 2.4%
- Gem: 2.3%
- ABC2: 1.3%
- SBS2: 0.7%
- ABC3: 0.6%
- ABC News 24: 0.5%
- One: 0.4%
Monday’s top 15 shows:
- Underbelly: Files Nine 1.377m
- My Kitchen Rules Seven 1.332m
- Today Tonight Seven 1.249m
- Seven News Seven 1.248m
- Bones Seven 1.208m
- Two and a Half Men – 7:30pm Nine 1.193m
- Nine News Nine 1.186m
- Shit My Dad Says Nine 1.061m
- A Current Affair Nine 1.051m
- Home and Away Seven 1.049m
- ABC News ABC 1.041m
- Australian Story ABC 0.915m
- Two and a Half Men – 7:00pm Nine 0.879m
- Brothers and Sisters Seven 0.832m
- The 7:30 Report ABC 0.831m
Network share:
- Seven: 32.1%
- Nine: 31.2%
- Ten: 16.8%
- ABC: 15.3%
- SBS: 4.7%
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Poor George Negus. Any news program that replaces the 6pm Simpsons time slot is doomed from the start.
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Damn – I didn’t even know the Underbelly movie was on.. I don’t recall seeing any ads for it
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