Melbourne news director for Nine, Hugh Nailon, has congratulated his team on winning the ratings for 2020 in Melbourne.
The Melbourne win comes less than a month since Nine News Sydney claimed victory for 2020 and in doing so notched up its tenth year as the #1 Sydney news service.
Since 2011, there have been 380 ratings weeks. 9News Sydney has won 351 of them.
See also: Nine News Sydney reaches a new milestone with record winning streak
“Very pleased to be able to announce we have won the ratings year for 2020. This is the 9th year in a row we have been Melbourne’s Number 1,” said Nailon after the ratings for week 32 were finalised on the weekend.
“In the official ratings survey so far this year, we have won 23 weeks out of a possible 24.
“Our average audience for 6:00pm Monday-Friday, across the hour is 350,000, compared to 7 News 324,000. Year on year, our M-F audience is up 25%.
“Our Weekend numbers are also strong: Saturday 9News – 334,000 – 7News 254,000 (up 35%). Sunday 9News – 387,000 – 7News 343,000 (up 21%).
“In the keenly contested 1600 battleground, Nine’s Afternoon News has edged in front of Channel 7 for the first time! 9 Afternoon News 66,000 – 7 News at 4pm 65,000 (up 41%).
“These numbers are an extraordinary achievement in extraordinary times. Obviously Covid-19 is driving interest in Free to air News, but pleasingly the majority are turning to us. That’s a credit to your professionalism and commitment to producing high quality news bulletins under the most trying of circumstances.”
Nailon also highlighted how Nine News had performed with its digital and social content.
“9news.com.au is attracting record levels of traffic to the site. In the latest Nielsen survey (July) we are ranked No.3 in Australia with a Unique Audience of 9.91 Million. Page Views in July 2020 were 165 Million, up 68% on July 2019.
“In Social, 9News Melbourne nearly doubled our Facebook engagement this year. We’re up to 11 million vs 5.7 million in 2019. This measures every time someone likes, comments or shares 9News content.
“Overall this is an outstanding result for our newsroom, and richly deserved reward for your hard work. On top of the relentless news cycle, we’ve also successfully embraced the delivery of radio news content to 3AW, and increasingly we’re working alongside our colleagues at The Age on breaking news stories. I can’t stress how important these partnerships are in building a news machine that will enable us to continue delivering Melbourne’s best news.”
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Top Photo: Nine’s Melbourne news team Peter Hitchener, Livinia Nixon and Tony Jones