• Seven wins first night of week 14 despite trailing part of evening
• Nine’s penultimate Married At First Sight sets season high with 1.37m
• 60 Minutes #1 in current affairs battle with first win since week seven
• Daylight saving helps send Sunday 6pm news audiences higher
Week 14 breakfast war: Sunrise at Royal Hawaiian, Today at Bradman Oval
Seven managed to win its second successive Sunday despite Nine leading in the key timeslots at 7pm and then after the reality shows wrapped around 8.30pm.
Seven and Nine saw bumps for their Sunday news audiences following the introduction of daylight saving.
Nine’s Married At First Sight reached a new high for its penultimate episode. Nine also ranked #1 for 60Minutes which followed.
Seven’s My Kitchen Rules was up significantly week-on-week, but not enough to overhaul Married At FirstSight, which has ranked #1 on Sunday for six successive weeks.
Breakfast TV on the road: Monday
Mel and Kochie welcomed viewers from a canoe off Waikiki Beach this morning as they started their journey across the USA in Hawaii.
The Today show intro from Karl, Lisa and Dickie was nearly drowned out by the Highlands Pipe and Drum Band playing in the middle of the Bradman Oval. The Today show was broadcasting from Bowral on the first day of its first We Love Australia trip for 2017.
While Natalie Barr read the news from beside the beach in the grounds of The Royal Hawaiian in Oahu, Nine’s Alicia Loxley presented the bulletins from the Nine Sydney studios.
Sunrise weather presenter Sam Mac was on the Hawaiian island of Kona. Today show weather presenter Natalia Cooper was at a vineyard down the road from the Bradman Oval in the NSW Southern Highlands.
Amongst the guests on the Today show were Bowral local Jimmy Barnes and recently married Nine lovebirds Sylvia Jeffreys and Peter Stefanovic.
On Tuesday Today will be visiting the Gold Coast. Just after 8.30am this morning Sunrise revealed its next stop will be San Fransisco.
The week 13 ratings for the two programs saw Sunrise on 362,000 with Today on 298,000.
Seven
Seven News Sunday narrowly won the network 6pm hour with 1.24m, a nice jump from 1.05m a week ago.
A week that features five dinner parties (with the first My Kitchen Rules Thursday episode this season to come) started with 1.25m. That was up on 1.16m from week 13. At these dinner parties the focus is on the food and last night Della and Tully managed a 10 out of 10 from Manu for their entrée and a total of 88 which put them second on the leaderboard of eight couples.
Seven’s Sunday Night trailed 60 Minutes for the first time the two shows have been head-to-head in the past six weeks. The audience of 764,000 was the third time under 800,000 in those six weeks.
A repeat of In Cold Blood: The Chris Lane Story then did 375,000, which was enough to win its timeslot.
Nine
Nine News Sunday was a winner in Sydney and Brisbane and went very close in Adelaide. Nine too got a big 6pm audience lift with 1.04m last week turning into 1.21m last night.
Married At First Sight managed to cover the final dinner party in the first half of the two-part reunion episode. The arrivals were dragged out with Anthony the last to arrive 47 minutes after the show started and two minutes after the guests finally sat at the dinner table.
There was plenty of interest in the arrivals though with the cast getting back together for the first time in two months. Cheryl managed to deliver again as she moved amongst the guests dropping bombshells, as did the “runaway bride” Lauren. There was much excitement when Nadia arrived alone, telling her fellow cast members, “Anthony dropped me like a hot scone”. It was only a few minutes after Anthony arrived that we saw the first departure, Michael was out the door followed by Scarlett. She seemed to lose the dinner party vibe after someone muttered she was “such a psycho”. Our favourite line from Cheryl was: “I am real except for my tits…and maybe part of my lips”. Mutterings between Anthony and Nadia proved a nightmare for the sound team, with Nine helpfully adding subtitles to some of the discussion.
The Sunday audience of 1.37m was not only the highest-rating episode this season, but it was the best across all seasons.
On 60 Minutes the big drawcards were an investigation by Ross Coulthart and a work-out from a Tara Brown interview. The episode did 830,000, which saw it win the timeslot and conquer Sunday Night for the first time since the two shows had been going up against each other six weeks ago. The biggest 60 Minutes crowd was in week seven, 887,000, when it managed to outrate part one of Seven’s Hoges.
TEN
Share has been steady for the past three Sundays with Modern Family the best last night with both episodes over 400,000.
Bull then did 373,000 which was the same as last week.
Earlier in the night Bondi Rescue did 335,000 and Family Feud Sunday was on 232,000.
ABC
The channel had its lowest Sunday share of the survey year.
ABC News did 703,000, but dropped 30,000 week-on-week unlike the commercial 6pm bulletins which lifted significantly.
A repeat episode of Grand Designs then did 547,000 after 675,000 for a new FTA episode last Sunday.
The ABC has taken over presenting the Melbourne Comedy Festival Gala from Network Ten. Wil Anderson hosted last night with 447,000 watching. That was only down a little on last year’s 474,000 when it appeared on TEN.
SBS
The channel enjoyed its biggest Sunday share since week two this year.
Pulling the biggest crowd was That Sugar Film with 288,000 watching after 8.30pm, which was enough to land in the top 20.
The second of the three-part Britain’s Ancient Capital did 241,000 with SBS News on 202,000.