Although Nine has faced some formidable opposition from BBL cricket and jungle antics across the two weeks of the Australia Open, Seven and 10 got serious last night trying to woo away some of Nine’s tennis crowd.
Did they succeed? Yes and no.
Nine’s Australian Open Men’s Final audience was steady year on year – 1.589m in 2019 and 1.524m in 2020. That easily gave Nine another massive AO share of 40.0%. That was its second-best share of the fortnight after 44.7% on Monday last week when Kyrgios played in primetime. That Monday also delivered the single biggest TV audience of the Open – 1.872m watching Kyrgios.
On Saturday night a metro audience of 890,000 saw Sofia Kenin win the women’s title. That was down from 1.171m in 2019.
Seven’s My Kitchen Rules: The Rivals opened its revamped format on 498,000. This has set a record no one ever wants – the lowest launch audience in the history of the format. The audience will of course bounce back – but by how much this week and will missing the first episode of a revamped format make people think they won’t be able to get into the season?
10’s I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! ended on 884,000 with the announcement of Miguel as the winner after the regular part of the final episode did 803,000. The final episode of the 2019 season went out in week 8 last year. Even so the year-on-year comparison is good for 10. The Winner Announced that year did 895,000 while the remainder of the series final did 684,000.
The Celebrity comparisons against the week of the Men’s Final last year (Week 5) see Celebrity on 644,000 and 691,000 against the tennis.
On the ABC a David Attenborough doco did 380,000 followed by Maigret on 339,000.
Earlier in the day an audience of 292,000 watched David Speers hosting his first episode and the season debut of Insiders.