ABC warms up as weather chills

TELEVISION viewing rose for many programs on Sunday night as the weather chilled and the ABC registered its best prime-time result for the year.

Cliffy

TELEVISION viewing rose for many programs on Sunday night as the weather chilled and the ABC registered its best prime-time result for the year.

The first part of the political biography, Whitlam: The Power and the Passion, had 983,000 viewers at 7.30pm, a number only rivalled by an episode of Galapagos in March (947,000) and the telemovie about ultramarathon champion Cliff Young, Cliffy, averaged 927,000, the best result at 8.30pm for ABC1 for the year.

Nine still won the night marginally in all people from Seven (22.6 per cent channel share against Seven’s 22.3 per cent) although ABC1 (14.0) and Network Ten (14.8 per cent) registered the biggest gains.

Nine trounced Seven in the key advertising demographic of viewers aged 25-54 however, with a 26.0 per cent channel share in that demographic against Seven’s 16.9 per cent (and Ten’s 18.3 per cent). Seven made up some ground with a 5.7 per cent channel share among 25-54s for its digital channel 7mate.

Seven News was up markedly from last Sunday, adding 139,000 viewers nationally to top the night with 1.56 million viewers, ahead of The Block Sky High’s 1.476 million (down 48,000 on last week) and Nine News (1.43 million).

Seven’s Sunday Night was well up at 6.30pm adding 160,000 on last week (1.30 million) while Seven’s factual hour at 7.30pm (The Force’s 1.04 million and Highway Patrol’s 962,000) lost audience against 60 Minutes, which was itself down on last week’s season high of 1.70 million to 1.41 million.

Among the other local dramas, A Place To Call Home consolidated its average audience with 1.16 million viewers - bang on its average for the past three weeks - while Nine’s House Husbands was down on the previous week by 147,000 viewers.

Ten’s Sunday also rose with The Biggest Loser: Next Generation growing to its second best Sunday audience of the year (905,000) and Elementary rising almost 100,000 viewers on last week to 791,000.

OZTAM OVERNIGHT RANKINGS, MAY 26
1 SEVEN NEWS Seven 1,560,000
2 THE BLOCK SKY HIGH Nine 1,476,000
3 NINE NEWS SUNDAY Nine 1,429,000
4 60 MINUTES Nine 1,405,000
5 SUNDAY NIGHT Seven 1,301,000
6 A PLACE TO CALL HOME Seven 1,160,000
7 THE FORCE - BEHIND THE LINE Seven 1,035,000
8 HOUSE HUSBANDS Nine 1,034,000
9 WHITLAM: THE POWER AND THE PASSION ABC 983,000
10 HIGHWAY PATROL Seven 962,000
11 CLIFFY ABC 927,000
12 THE BIGGEST LOSER NEXT GEN Ten 905,000
13 ABC NEWS ABC 845,000
14 ELEMENTARY Ten 791,000
15 MODERN FAMILY Ten 790,000
Copyright in the data is owned by OzTAM and may not be used or reproduced without permission.