Aunty takes poll position in election coverage

The calling of the election race on Saturday night dominated television ratings.

Sky News ran ‘Australia Decides’, hosted by David Speers, on election night.

A bunch of politicians, commentators and journalists desperately flicking through their phones might not sound like great television, but the calling of the election race on Saturday night dominated ratings.

And while the unlikely victory of Scott Morrison and the Coalition started to look likely before prime time ended, viewers clung on until after midnight when the victory and concession speeches were finally aired.

Those who planned to be glued to a television screen on Saturday night had more choice than previous years, with Seven, Nine, Ten, ABC, SBS and Sky News all battling it out for the most authoritative voice.

But each network had something to offer: from Nine’s “Bish Boot” gimmick to the much anticipated “call” of chief elections analyst Antony Green on the ABC, where the highest number of viewers tuned in for analysis.

How Hawke’s death dominated the media cycle

The combined power of ABC’s journalists with Labor senator Penny Wong and Liberal senator Arthur Sinodinos, brought the ABC about 775,000 metropolitan viewers from 6pm onwards, its biggest audience coming between 8pm and 9.30pm — 940,000 viewers in the metro cities and 1.336 million nationally.

A late night election episode of ABC’s The Drum with actor Magda Szubanski, football commentator Craig Foster, author ­Jamila Rizvi, journalist Stan Grant and former professional surfer Layne Beachley was watched by 657,000 people, according to preliminary figures.

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On secondary channel ABC News, the ABC averaged an additional 258,833 metropolitan viewers for its coverage, and ABC’s live streaming on iview had 300,000 plays.

ABC election expert Green called a Coalition victory about 9.30pm on Saturday, but he was not the first. Just 45 minutes prior, Ten political editor and contributing editor at The Australian Peter van Onselen had predicted a ­victory for the Liberal Party on Twitter.

While the broadcasters and other media battled it out to call the election first, the ABC was quicker to call individual seats.

Through the night its tally of seats won, lost and in doubt was ahead of the count on other broadcasters.

According to those familiar with the polling, the commercial networks used the same data and prediction services from an independent company, which worked on a “zero presumption approach”. That ensured any results posted were not reversed, while the ABC’s numbers often jumped backwards and forwards.

According to an article posted by Green last week, the set-up for the ABC’s election coverage is done 18 months ahead of time, and involves building its election computer with candidates, polling places, past results, preference formulas and special coding to control television and website graphics. Green said the predictions were computer-automated, and drove what viewers saw on graphics and tickets on the bottom of a television screen.

Outside the ABC, the network that most people tuned in to was Nine. About 450,000 metropolitan viewers watched Nine’s coverage, which included analysis from Julie Bishop, Tanya Plibersek, Anthony Albanese and Bridget McKenzie. Seven’s coverage with politicians Jeff Kennett, Chris Bowen, Jenny McAllister and Craig Laundy was viewed by 262,000 metropolitan viewers and 489,000 nationally.

Ten’s offering, with Christopher Pyne, Kristina Keneally, Sam Dastyari and Trent Zimmerman, averaged 106,750 viewers from 6pm.

Sky News, which ran Australia Decides with David Speers from 5pm until 12.30am, averaged 132,000 viewers over the night.

SBS started its coverage at 10.10pm. However, by that point the fate of Bill Shorten and the Labor Party had been decided.

In Melbourne, the next generation of political journalists took their chance to cover the election via an initiative under billionaire philanthropist Judith Nielsen’s $100 million journalism institute.

A national student election broadcast out of RMIT University involved close to 100 students, academics and technology staff.

RMIT journalism lecturer Phil Kafcaloudes told The Australian the program was the first time there had been a national collaboration between students for a federal election broadcast.