Barnaby Joyce interview is a ratings flop

Barnaby Joyce and Vikki Campion’s much-hyped $150,000 interview has received disappointing ratings.

Vikki Campion and Barnaby Joyce interviewed on Channel 7’s Sunday Night program. Picture: Channel 7

Barnaby Joyce and Vikki Campion’s much-hyped $150,000 interview has received disappointing ratings, with just 631,000 viewers on average watching in the major cities.

The Sunday Night program delivered 1 million viewers nationally for Seven as critics panned the broadcast.

Seven executives were privately hoping 1.5 million Australians would tune in for the tell-all interview with Joyce’s staffer-turned-partner Campion.

Sunday Night failed to pop despite a decent lead-in from Seven’s reality series House Rules, which ended at 8.33pm with 965,622 viewers.

In the opening segment, host Melissa Doyle promised “raw, unfiltered, and brutally honest” revelations, but nearly 200,000 viewers switched off before the interview got underway a minute later.

“Vikki Campion opens up for the first time about her elicit affair with Barnaby Joyce, their love child and the pressure that almost drove her to do the unthinkable,” Doyle told viewers.

During the first 4-minutes of the interview conducted by reporter Alex Cullen, however, another 64,000 viewers switched off.

GRAPHIC: The Joyce-Campion interview

Over the next hour, the interview continued to trend down, finishing at 9.34pm with 453,224 viewers — a drop of 41 per cent, from the opening minute.

One television executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “There was no sense they were going to be held accountable by Sunday Night. Plus, people don’t want to watch politicians, especially an adulterer.”

Cullen hit back at criticism that he went “soft” on Joyce by failing to ask tough questions he has been avoiding since news of the affair broke.

“I’d like to make it clear that (questions) about Joyce’s alleged taxpayer funded travel rorts and claims of sexual misconduct were asked in our @sundaynighton7 (interview),” Cullen tweeted today.

“The response to these (questions) was the same as we’ve heard time and time again. “Vehemently denied hence nothing new. #Auspol”

It wasn’t all bad, though. In a small win for Sunday Night, the special pulled in more viewers than Nine’s 60 Minutes in metropolitan markets, which drew 429,000 viewers at 9.28pm although the two shows did not go head to head.

Sunday Night’s exclusive one-hour interview, which began at 7.30pm, added about 200,000 viewers compared to the prior week.

60 Minutes has dominated Sunday Night so far this year, however, averaging 717,000 five-city viewers to Sunday Night’s 591,000 viewers, according to official OzTAM figures.

Last night’s instalment featured Allison Langdon reporting on sexual assaults at university residential colleagues.

Overall, Seven won Sunday night with a 29.2 per cent share of the free-to-air audience, and a clean sweep of all the key demographics favoured by advertisers.

House Rules was the most popular entertainment show, beating Ten’s MasterChef Australia and Nine’s The Voice with 1.4m viewers nationally. Seven News won the night with 1.5m viewers across the country.