Fickle Sydney audience denies Ten first ratings win in six years
Ten narrowly missed out on its first all-people weekly ratings win in six years after its audience share collapsed in Sydney on Saturday night.
Despite Ten winning Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday’s ratings, and leading on cumulative share for the first six days of the race, Seven pipped the network at the post on cumulative Sunday-to-Saturday share by a narrow 18.5% to 18.3%. Nine finished third for the week on 14.9%.
However, the week was still one of Ten’s best performances of the decade, driven by the series finale of Masterchef and the launch of the new series of The Bachelor.
It’s also likely that when the demographic data becomes available, Ten will have won in the key advertising demos.
Apart from wins outside the official ratings period driven by Big Bash cricket, the last time Ten won a week in all-people was for three weeks in a row during the culmination of the first year of Masterchef in 2010.
Saturday night saw some quirky viewing patterns, including Sydney viewers giving SBS an unusually high share of 9% in the city compared to Ten’s poor 6.9%. SBS’s British-made documentary The Six Queens of Henry VIII rated 100,000 in Sydney, making it the most 11th most watched show in the Sydney and well ahead of Ten’s David Attenborough’s Mountain Lions which only rated 63,000 in the city.
Meanwhile, Seven’s victory for the week was sealed by an audience of 309,000 in Melbourne and 119,000 in Adelaide tuning in for the AFL games between North Melbourne and St Kilda and Brisbane vs Port Adelaide respectively.
Seven finished Saturday with a five city metro share of 20.7%, ahead of Nine’s 14.9%, ABC’s 13.3%, Ten’s 7.7% and SBS’s 6.6%, according to the preliminary overnight metro ratings from OzTam.
However, Ten still clocked up a rare ratings win for the week in Melbourne, with a share of 19.2%, just ahead of Seven’s 18.9% and Nine’s 17.2%.
Thanks to NRL, Nine won the week in Sydney with a share of 19.3%, ahead of Ten’s 18.3% and Seven’s 16.9%.
Seven won for the week in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.
The weekly win now leaves Seven on the verge of ratings victory for the 40-week official ratings year, with 19 wins so far.
Today saw The Sunday Telegraph declare Seven the winners already, arguing it is a 38-week official ratings year because of The Olympics.
However, the official OzTam calendar still lists the coming Olympic weeks as part of the battle. This year, Seven’s live Olympics coverage will miss out on primetime because of the time difference in Rio.
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