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Viewers lukewarm on John Howard interview

Ratings: Seven's John Howard interview is no booster for Sunday Night, while there's no stopping The Block.

jhowdJohn Howard would lose a popularity contest against Scott Cam, and The Code isn’t as strong as ANZAC Girls despite being infinitely superior -that’s the snapshot from Sunday night ratings.

Seven’s much-publicised interview with John Howard, albeit in a different timeslot to The Block, was 1.06m viewers -no improvement on the preceding week. More concerningly, it was beaten by 60 Minutes at 1.21m with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga.

Sunday Night is promising a “Part 2” to the story with “explosive” details, but viewers appear to have moved on.

Meanwhile ABC’s excellent new thriller The Code did good business at 771,000, but 6 weeks ago ANZAC Girls premiered with 1.06m viewers in August.

But The Block again topped the night at 1.66m viewers taking Nine to the win.

Nine network scored a 31.5% share then Seven 28.7%, ABC 16.6%, TEN 16.4% and SBS 6.9%.

Also rating for Nine were Nine News (1.22m) and Big Brother (667,000).

Seven News was 1.23m for Seven then The X Factor (1.13m). Castle was 548,000 / 401,000.

ABC News (841,000) led for ABC. Following The Code was Doctor Who (644,000 / 85,000), Compass (439,000) and The Bletchley Circle (423,000).

TEN was treading water under 500,000 with TEN Eyewitness News at 451,000. Movie Iron Man 2 was 448,000, Modern Family was 391,000, Formula One was 296,000 in 3 cities (142,000 on ONE) and Bondi Rescue was just 282,000 (it will take a miracle to launch Scorpion with that as a lead in next Sunday).

SBS had a good night with Treasures of Ancient Egypt (346,000) and The Sixties (307,000). Both were well ahead of SBS World News (148,000) and Monty Python’s Life of Brian (180,000).

ABC2’s Tree Fu Tom topped multichannels on 257,000.

OzTAM Overnights: Sunday 21 September 2014

20 Responses

  1. I missed half of BB’s Sunday night ep due to incorrect starting times, yet I surprisingly didn’t care.

    After watching Monday night’s BB manipulations my interest is seriously beginning to wane.

    I don’t care care who gets the friggin money from the dance off and why did they announce a couple who are safe from an eviction before an eviction show. Like it matters.

    Now I just tend to just skip Sonia’s white noise.

  2. G’day David, just wondering who was the more popular Bolt on Sunday morning? Usain (Wide World of Sports had a special with a show-long live interview) or Andrew?

  3. The Code was much better than the Anzac Girls premiere and I will definitely return next week.

    Big Brother was awful last night, the whole show was set up. It will struggle to anchor the night in October with those numbers, unless producers are prepared to let down their guard and give viewers something more compelling.

  4. I thought The Code really lacked zing. So many hackneyed ideas…corrupt politicians, determined journo on the hunt etc. Zuckerman’s character was kind of interesting but not riveting. It’s okay to say it gets better but drama needs to hit the ground running… Yes, like State Of Play.

  5. With Dan Ricciardo doing so well, it’s good to see Perth tuning in and also good to see Will Davison there filling in for Alan Jones
    @Maev…..Sydney – it’s a very good track and classified as a marquee track as the Singapore GP is more for Europe and Asia then America as that it is where the heartland of F1 is

  6. I seem to recall, many posters in here saying they were not interested in Sunday’s 2 parters, full stop.
    F!…I did not find visually enjoyable…do not care for the track setup.

  7. @Pertinax – I agree that Edge of Darkness (the UK TV show, not the lame Mel Gibson movie. Yes, yes, I know that’s a tautology!) was a spectacular example of how to do a TV show about conspiracy.

    However, nothing beats The Prisoner from 1967-68 for sheer mind-bending paranoia. It’s like Stanley Kubrick meets David Lynch. Nothing like that will ever be made again.

  8. “with “explosive” details”, like the promo for a similar interview a few weeks ago. Or was that another station? And can’t recall the guy’s name. So memorable and “explosive”.
    What a snooze-fest. Switched off after a while, over to The Code.

  9. The Code isn’t very good. State of Play but with a plot that makes even less sense. They can only generate suspense by contriving the withholding of facts and editing to misinform the viewer. They have the entire of Canberra and the Outback to play with but 90% of it is poorly shot in dark boring sets. Jesse is the only remotely interesting character, a good performance by Zukerman after the poorly directed opening. Shame a paranoid hacker under a court order and surveillance forgot to back up a video he was working on. It seems Jenifer Lawrence’s breast are the only thing you can’t keep of the internet these days.

    Watch Edge Of Darkness or The Honourable Women for how to do conspiracy stuff well.

    I don’t think that Ten has much faith in Scorpion. It is just being sent over the top with a lot of hype against The Block and The X Factor before it tanks in the US. The purpose…

  10. ‘Sunday Night’ was, once again, a splendid example at how good 7’s publicity machine is at making something look interesting out of nothing.

    What was the saying… “making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”…?

  11. I enjoyed The Code, but it tested my patience at times. There were lots and lots and lots of scenes where people surfed the net. The director tried to jazz it up with funky visuals, but there is something inherently undramatic about someone sitting down and typing stuff into a computer (just like I am doing now!).

    The Code reminded me a little of the British TV mini-series State of Play, which is a masterclass in how to keep things moving when you are dealing with politics and journalists, two subjects which are not very interesting by themselves.

  12. Its a shame more people didn’t watch The Code because it was excellent. As you say David, it was far superior to Anzac Girls. The promotion of The Code though was more low key which could explain the lower numbers. It will be interesting to see what the figures are next week, given the very positive comments so far. Word of mouth might encourage more people to watch.

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