0/5

Ratings slip under 900,000 mark

Ratings: Never mind the magic million -now we're struggling to reach 900,000 on a Thursday.

2014-11-21_0954Last night was not the first time ratings have fallen under the 900,000 mark -but it may well be the first time it’s happened on a Thursday.

Normally such low numbers are reserved for a Friday or Saturday. Creeping earlier into the viewing week reflects that earlier weeknights, including Tuesdays, have been under one million viewers.

Audiences have been indicating they have been largely indifferent to a lot of what’s on offer. Even compared with recent years that are also impacted by Daylight Saving, 2014 is hitting a lower base much earlier in Overnight figures.

If there was any good news last night it was probably at SBS which pulled its best audience share for the week.

Nine network won the night with 27.6% then Seven 26.9%, TEN 19.5%, ABC 18.2% and SBS 7.8%.

Nine News was 892,000 / 875,000 for Nine then ACA (798,000), King’s Cross ER (726,000), Big Brother (516,000) and Hot Seat (508,000). Movie: My Big Fat Greek Wedding was 265,000.

Seven News (872,000 / 845,000) was best for Seven then Home and Away (784,000), Beauty and the Geek (528,000 / 496,000) and Million Dollar Minute (428,000). The Happenings was 230,000.

TEN Eyewitness News was 534,000 for TEN. Madam Secretary was 532,000, The Project was 496,000 / 360,000, Save with Jamie was 468,000 and SVU was 336,000.

ABC News (742,000) led ABC then 7:30 (684,000), Catalyst (642,000), Upper Middle Bogan (585,000), It’s a Date (494,000) and QI (396,000). The Midwives was 259,000.

First Contact finished with 399,000 / 10,000 for SBS. Next were Insight (297,000), Food Safari (232,000), SBS World News (Late: 100,000, Early: 92,000). Thai Street Food was 65,000.

7TWO’s A Touch of Frost (352,000) topped multichannels.

OzTAM Overnights: Thursday 20 November 2014

14 Responses

  1. There really is nothing worth watching on FTA tv and or pay tv. I am finding I am watching less tv and watching more tv on the internet .we want drama and comedy no more reality .why don’t tv bosses listen .

  2. Thursdays are symptomatic of the woeful programming of commercial channels, I never watch anything live on commercial, always PVR and skip the endless and mindless commercials.

  3. I couldn’t agree more that the lack of decent offerings is reflected in the ratings, and the constant barrage of reality / talent quests puts people like me right off. Unfortunately they still rate well, probably because there’s nothing else, certainly on commercial TV. (I realised recently that I never watch anything on 9)

    I’m watching the ABC and SBS more and more, specially SBS. But even SBS do horrible things to their schedule. They pulled Salamander from a watchable timeslot, bunged it into the small wee hours, but why? They’re used to low ratings, so surely it can’t be that. At least they’ve released all the remaining episodes onto SBS On Demand, which is fairly decent of them, but why move it in the first place.

    If more people tried SBS they might find they’re very surprised at the really good content they amass from all over the world. There’s some great…

  4. This is really very interesting, we PVD’d Madam Secretary yesterday we may not see it for a couple of years, bitter experience in the past with the OZTAM generated rating that saw our fav show disappear forced our household not to watch a series until we have all the episodes. With 7 it was 24, 9 it was Fringe and 10 it was Smallville. People grow tired of being beholden to tv channels.

  5. TV is is a joke at the moment. It has never been as bad as it is now. I’ve almost stopped watching movies now (because they all suck) and TV isn’t far behind. The wat things are going, they will be lucky to get 400,000 people watch per night.

  6. My PVR has a rest on Thursdays. Nothing interests me. Most of the week is looking slim and has been. It is as if the ratings finished in September or early October!

  7. 10 years ago the networks would be leaving all the best shows for the year to be aired during this time with finales in the the last week of November. All to finish of the year big and impress the advertisers for the new year.

    Not anymore.

    Huge opportunity in November for TEN to lift market share…if they had anything!!!

  8. This second season of ‘It’s A Date’ isn’t as good as the first – the basic premise seems to have shifted away from gentle observational humour to artificial sit-com snippets instead.

    ‘Upper Middle Bogan’ is generally better than the concept would lead you to expect, though it’s pretty inconsistent. Again, the average quality of the first series is better than the second, although the second has had some better episodes.

  9. I watched Upper Middle Bogan for the first time yesterday (nothing else was of interest) and well, it’s not great.
    First time watching It’s A Date too, marginally better but both didn’t leave a good impression unfortunately.

Leave a Reply