Ashes attracts big TV audience

Almost 1 million TV viewers tuned in to watch Steve Smith’s triumphant return to test cricket last night.

Australia's Steve Smith acknowledges the crowd. Picture: AFP

The first day of the 2019 Ashes and Steve Smith’s triumphant return to Australian test cricket caught the attention of television viewers, bringing close to a million to their screens on Thursday night.

As the first session kicked off at 8pm (AEST) on Nine, almost 700,000 cricket fanatics across the five metropolitan cities watched as Australia took on England in Edgbaston.

Preliminary figures from OzTAM show 695,000 viewers from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, watched session one of the first day, when Smith took to the pitch for Australia for the first time in 481 days.

Smith and fellow batsman David Warner were banned from Australian test cricket following a ball tampering incident in Cape Town. Cameron Bancroft, the third player banned due to involvement in the incident, is also in the Ashes squad.

When taking into account regional areas, the audience grew to 932,000.

Session two, which ran from 10.40pm (AEST) onwards, was watched by 392,000 in the metro cities, while nationally 503,000 were glued to their screens.

The Ashes’ biggest audience was from Melbourne, which had 330,000 viewers viewing session one and 174,000 drawn to session two. The coverage of the Ashes ran on Nine’s main channel in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, while in Sydney and Brisbane it ran on 9Gem due to the NRL.

In 2015, when the Ashes were last played in England and ran solely on 9GEM, session one of day one had a metro audience of 678,000, while session two had an audience of 484,000.

Overall, the first session of the Ashes was the most watched non-news program on Thursday evening. Seven News and Nine News ran earlier in the night and had audiences of more than 900,000 across the metro cities, making them the most watched programs of the evening.

But The Ashes was more popular than Ten’s Bachelor Australia, which averaged 693,000 metropolitan viewers from 7.30pm, and Seven’s Home and Away’s 565,000 viewers. Seven’s AFL show Front Bar, which commenced at 8.30pm in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, was watched by 344,000.

Nine’s NRL final between the West Tigers and the North Queensland Cowboys pulled in an audience of 305,000 across the capital cities, and 484,000 nationally.