Low scores for Nine's live NRL
NINE's experiment with live NRL matches on Thursday nights appears to be faltering as the broadcast sheds 300,000 viewers in three weeks.
THE Thursday night NRL Live experiment is faltering for Nine. Audiences fell almost 100,000 in Sydney and Brisbane in the third week of the rugby league broadcast, which has shed almost 300,000 viewers compared with the blockbuster season opener.
The Storm’s victory over the Bulldogs attracted 326,000 viewers in Sydney and 206,000 in Brisbane and failed to lend any momentum to the Sydney version of The Footy Show.
While The Footy Show's national audience of 721,000 attracted a healthy 290,000 viewers for the AFL edition in Melbourne, the NRL version fell to just 161,000 viewers in Sydney, down 93,000 compared with the previous week and 220,000 on the season opener (although the figures are complicated by over-runs).
Nevertheless, Nine won its second night in a row in all people with a channel share of 22.0 per cent, ahead of Seven’s 21.1 per cent and ABC1’s 13.5 per cent, according to preliminary OzTAM capital city data.
Seven won in all people in Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth but Nine won nationally in all major demographics and also scored a 5.0 per cent share for GO!
The networks' Thursday night schedules won’t settle until after Easter when the Thursday night matches are shelved.
Meantime the national audience ho-hummed at news of the ALP spill. A number of new bulletins extended to an hour for no discernible ratings advantage. Seven News and Nine News were each about 100,000 down on their Thursday averages for the year and the second half hour, coded as Today Tonight (983,000) and A Current Affair (896,000) were about average for the year.
The 7pm half-hour of a special one-hour ABC News hosted by Leigh Sales (798,000) was well down on its Thursday night average for the year but the second half-hour (798,000) was up on 7.30’s average for the night.
ABC1 had a win with the debut of the consumer affairs program The Checkout, featuring Julian Morrow, Craig Reucassel, Kirsten Drysdale and Kate Browne attracting 795,000, winning its timeslot and ranking seventh for the night.
The first part of a two-episode documentary on a new Aussie sex symbol in the UK, Kangaroo Dundee, also lifted audiences to 651,000, ABC1’s best result in the Thursday 8.30pm timeslot for the year.
OVERNIGHT OZTAM RANKINGS, MARCH 21
1 SEVEN NEWS Seven 1,074,000
2 NINE NEWS Nine 1,024,000
3 TODAY TONIGHT Seven 983,000
4 HOME AND AWAY Seven 925,000
5 A CURRENT AFFAIR Nine 896,000
6 ABC NEWS ABC 798,000
7 THE CHECKOUT ABC 795,000
8 BONES Seven 742,000
9 THE FOOTY SHOW Nine 721,000
10 7.30 ABC 710,000
11 KANGAROO DUNDEE ABC 651,000
12 BONES Seven 588,000
13 HOT SEAT Nine 580,000
14 TEN NEWS AT FIVE Ten 534,000
15 THURSDAY NIGHT NRL LIVE Nine 532,000
Copyright in the data is owned by OzTAM and may not be used or reproduced without permission.