• Nine return to survey as ratings royalty with Sunday victory
• Lego Masters returns with a 1.2m+ audience for the sequel
• 10 keeps MasterChef over 1m – relax, Poh still in the game
• Mystery Road returns on 655,000, Spicks and Specks 690,000
Sunday news highlights
Seven News 1,253,000
Nine News 1,112,000
ABC News 905,000
60 Minutes 723,000
Nine News Late 531,000
Insiders 458,000
The Project 419,000/613,000
10 News 391,000/318,000
Sunrise 332,000
ABC News Breakfast 231,000
Today 221,000
SBS World News 244,000
After a two week survey break for Easter, official ratings have returned. Pin your ears back – there are now 32 non-stop weeks of survey until the year stops on Saturday November 28.
Nine has won the return comfortably, MasterChef has kept 10 in the game while Seven had a good result despite House Rules running fourth in its timeslot.
Nine: The tap has been turned on for what host Hamish Blake called Lego Masters The Sequel last night. The clever show that tracks teams competing with Lego builds launched last year on 1.372m and has returned this year with a launch crowd of 1.239m. That makes it the biggest series launch of 2020 so far. When the roller door went up on the new season the new contestants arrived with some more anxious than others to get underway. There’s lots to like about all the contestants, but Andrew and Damien look a formidable duo and they took out a win on the first episode. Their reward was the Mega Brick – a Golden Brick with an added bonus. It was a good start in their quest for the $100,000 prize money.
Elsewhere on Nine 60 Minutes did 723,000 with updates on the coronavirus (Made in China) and an interview with Cassie Sainsbury after release from her Colombian jail.
Seven: The primary channel and network share narrowly finished second for the night all people, but not in the key demos. That’s probably a good result given that House Rules remains well behind the field in the early evening with 630,000 watching the start of a new week. What are the chances – the audience watching a week ago was also 630,000. They are a loyal given the attractions on offer elsewhere.
Seven’s Sunday movie was then a contributor with 272,000 watching Forrest Gump until 11.30pm.
10: Although 10 didn’t win the night or the MasterChef timeslot, the first elimination episode did manage to keep the audience over 1m which is a good result. It was also a good result for Poh as she managed to dodge another saucepan of boiling water in the kitchen. She bet her skills on baking a cake and succeeded big time, keeping her in the competition for at least a second week. The unlucky chef was Lynton Tapp who became the first elimination with 23 remaining. The first episode without Gordon Ramsay did 1,010,000.
Preceding the cooks was The Sunday Project where its Sunday audience of 613,000 after 7pm was its best since October 2018 and the second-best Sunday 7pm audience ever. The episode featured Tommy Little interviewing a work colleague who had suffered a stroke at the age of 19.
ABC: Another special episode of Spicks and Specks saw Adam, Myf and Alan joined by Ella Hooper, Nic Cester, Sarah Kendall and Joel Creasy on a music of the 2000s special episode. The show did 691,000.
The music quiz was a good lead-in for the return of Mystery Road with a cracking first episode featuring again Aaron Pedersen on the hunt for a murderer after the discovery of a headless corpse. The ratings of 655,000 placed the show in the top 10, but were well down on season 1, episode 1 which did 786,000 in 2018.
A second drama return followed close to 9.30pm with season three of Killing Eve launching on 235,000.
