According to Australia’s commercial TV networks, they don’t exist at the moment. Ratings are still taken, but really just to make sure no one is watching TV at Easter (truly!).
Easter in fact has a lot to answer for if you like watching free-to-air TV. Because of past conventions, the two-week Easter break is a non-ratings period in TV schedules due to the conjunction of school holidays and a long public holiday break (although they don’t really do the same for the Queen’s birthday break in June or the footy-finals-dominated Labour Day break in October in some states).
In ratings terms, these figures do not matter — and that tells us all we want to know about why free-to-air TV continues to lose viewers to streaming services. Nine, Ten and Seven just don’t care, nor do News Corp, CBS or Seven West Media.
Last night Seven won, and Netflix, Apple and Prime probably got knocked down by a wave of viewers rushing towards them.
The impact of the holidays was seen in the figures for the breakfast shows. Sunrise fell well under 400,000 viewers nationally (down 70,000 to 80,000), Today fell well under 300,000 (down 40,000 or so) and ABC News Breakfast dropped 40,000 to 60,000 on the previous week. The rest of the day and night was like that as well.
Network channel share:
- Seven (29.8%)
- Nine (24.1%)
- Ten (18.8%)
- ABC (17.5%)
- SBS (9.9%)
Network main channels:
- Seven (20.4%)
- Nine (15.7%)
- Ten (13.3%)
- ABC (13.1%)
- SBS ONE (5.3%)
Top 5 digital channels:
- 7TWO (4.2%)
- GO, 7mate (2.8%)
- 10 Peach (2.7%)
- 7flix (2.5%)
Top 10 national programs:
- Seven News — 1.527 million
- Seven News 6.30 — 1.462 million
- Nine News — 1.221 million
- Nine News 6.30 — 1.162 million
- 7pm ABC News — 967,000
- A Current Affair (Nine) — 915,000
- The Chase Australia 5.30pm (Seven) — 870,000
- 7.30 (ABC) — 777,000
- Home and Away (Seven) — 769,000
- Home and Away late (Seven) — 715,000
Top metro programs: none with a million or more viewers.
Regional Top 5: Seven News, 551,000; Seven News 6.30, 536,000; Nine News, 338,000; 7pm ABC News, 321,000; Nine News 6.30, 317,000.
Losers: all of us.
Metro news and current affairs:
- Seven News — 976,000
- Seven News 6.30 — 926,000
- Nine News — 883,000
- Nine News 6.30 — 846,000
- 7pm ABC News — 646,000
- ACA (Nine) — 614,000
- 7.30 (ABC) — 531,000
- Australian Story (ABC) — 477,000
- The Project 7pm (Ten) — 382,000
- Four Corners (ABC) — 340,000
Morning (national) TV:
- Sunrise (Seven) — 354,000/201,000
- Today (Nine) — 382,000/179,000
- ABC News Breakfast (ABC) — 247,000/155,000
- Morning News (ABC) — 224,000
- The Morning Show (Seven) — 220,000
- Today Extra (Nine) — 177,000
- Studio 10 (Ten) — 35,000
Top 5 pay TV programs:
- Paul Murray Live (Sky News) — 76,000
- The Bolt Report (Sky News) — 68,000
- AFL: 360 (Fox Footy) — 67,000
- Golf: Masters Final Round (Fox Sports) — 66,000
- Credlin (Sky News) — 54,000
