• News and A Current Affair secure Nine top spot on first Easter Monday
• ABC second as audiences on the move with no reality TV juggernauts
• Easter launch for Seven’s First Dates disappoints with 700,000
The Easter ratings break has given audiences the freedom to roam the dial with no reality format drawing a big audience. The ABC got a significant boost from the programming changes elsewhere with its biggest Monday share of the year.
Nine managed to win the night despite posting its smallest Monday share since January.
Seven slipped to third place with its lowest Monday share since week two this year.
Seven
Home and Away carries on through Easter with 724,000 last night.
First Dates returned with a disappointing 703,000 in the My Kitchen Rules timeslot. That was still a big enough audience though to rank #2 overall behind the ABC and #1 commercial.
Day two of the Swimming Championships with 229,000 watching. Not big numbers, but an investment for Seven in supporting Aussie swimmers ahead of the Comm Games and even the next Olympics. And as luck would have it, the event takes place in an out-of-survey week.
Nine
A Current Affair had a strong episode with a look at the challenges facing George Calombaris and his food empire, Trevor Long turned up to talk mobiles and then the show remembered some of its classic Clarke and Dawe moments, complete with the Mike Willesee introduction from when it first aired. The Monday crowd was 812,000 after their strongest ratings week of the year with an average of 826,000.
RBT then got an hour at 7.30pm with 668,000.
One of the final episodes of House Husbands this season then did 565,000, down from 643,000 last week which had Married At First Sight as the lead-in.
Some states then saw Footy Classified with a three-market audience of 198,000 and 139,000 in Melbourne.
TEN
Tina Arena was the final guest on The Project with Hugh Riminton taking the place of Waleed Aly. The show also supported dumped ABC presenter and former TEN colleague Natasha Exelby and Andrew Denton paid tribute to John Clarke. The 7pm half of the show was the channel’s best with 586,000.
Two episodes of Modern Family did 425,000 and 417,000.
TEN’s Monday movie was 2014’s The Other Woman with 383,000.
ABC
The channel’s 7.30 also paid tribute to John Clarke last night, which helped assemble an audience of 789,000.
Australian Story had its biggest audience of the year with 812,000.
Four Corners also performed well with 786,000.
Media Watch was on 668,000 and then Q&A did 519,000.
SBS
A repeat of Trust Me I’m A Doctor didn’t feature any train journeys yet it was close to 300,000.
The second and final part of Simon Reeve’s Turkey did 247,000.