Sunday: Week 18 2019 – Q2 off and running
• Nine’s LEGO investment builds massive Sunday audience
• How Seven might have done Nine a favour last night
• Monday showdown next: Jamie v Hamish v Garry, Matt and George
• Seven News 1,167,000
• Nine News 962,000
• ABC News 607,000
• Insiders 333,000
• The Project 222,000/316,000
• 10 News First 243,000
• Offsiders 175,000
• SBS World News 166,000
Breakfast TV
• Sunrise 267,000
• Today 178,000
Seven
Could Seven have done Nine a favour last night as it delayed the start of its My Kitchen Rules final until 8pm? That allowed Nine’s Lego Masters to avoid a direct clash early in the night with the cooking show’s Grand Final. However it also allowed MKR some cleaner air later in the night, which after checking the overnights, looks like a good decision.
However caught in the ratings crossfire were the House Rules launch and 10’s Bachelor In Paradise.
House Rules season seven started with the six teams arriving in Sydney on the way to a secret inner-city warehouse. They were being driven to the location in a fleet of sponsor’s cars – this year Suzuki. Host Johanna Griggs then welcomed them to what is the show’s new home base. It was also the start of a renovation project that kicked off the first episode. The highest-scoring team get an advantage when the competition proper starts. They had three days to complete the warehouse renovation.
While the night was being billed by some as Jamie Durie v Hamish Blake battle, the new House Rules judge didn’t make an appearance. Viewers will have to wait until tonight for the warehouse reveals to see him in action.
Meanwhile the season seven launch did 782,000 which probably isn’t a bad result given there was an average audience of 1.37m watching Lego Masters. It’s an even better figure when you note its better than last year’s launch audience of 607,000 (+29% this year) or any of the episodes in the first two weeks last year. House Rules is a notorious slow starter.
On the final episode of season 10 of My Kitchen Rules, the cooking didn’t stop until just before 10pm with the result pushing close to 10.15pm.
Listening to the judges giving their final appraisals viewers might have thought the show was headed for its first Grand Final tie.
The Newcastle cricket mates Matt and Luke got off to an average start in the competition, but their solid partnership saw them peak at the right time, winning People’s Choice at the final location challenge and coming in second on the Ultimate Instant Restaurant ladder. Their opponents Ibby and Romel had been the team to beat all along and last night they served a menu “full of attitude”, “skill” and “flavour”, but perhaps a little heavy on the spice leaving judges’ palates fatigued. Meanwhile Matt and Luke saved their best until last according to Pete, and with the record number of 10 judges describing their food as “elegant”, “stunning”, “restaurant quality” and “divine”, the mates walked away with the $250,000 first prize.
MKR had almost a Melbourne Cup-sized field of judges with Matt and Luke securing a score of 92 out of 100. Rachel Khoo judged them the harshest with an 8, while they secured 10s from Pete, Liz Egan and Guy Grossi. Ibby and Romel had eight scores of 9, but no 10s.
Nine
“Forget what you know about Lego,” said Hamish Blake as he introduced himself and Brickman at the start of their new series Lego Masters. “Welcome to Australia’s #1 Lego building show,” he said as the contestants entered the studio. He then explained the series winning team would get a trophy plus $100,000. The team winning last night’s competition won a Golden Brick, an immunity brick to keep them in the competition. Build #1 was developing a vacant city block to complete the Lego impressive city. They had 2.5m pieces of Lego to use and 15 hours to deliver their build.
Most Lego Masters reviewers mentioned how long the episodes are, the rest of the week will indicate how the audience deals with that. The audience seemed to actually grow across last night’s episode.
After securing a Lego Masters’ launch audience of 1.37m, Nine’s Q1 momentum continues. The program becomes the biggest new program launch of 2019 and the size of the audience meant it swept all key demos.
60 Minutes then included angry school parents talking to Liam Bartlett, Julian Assange’s father spoke with Tara Brown and Liz Hayes interviewed Martin Short and Steve Martin. The audience was on 556,000 after 562,000 a week ago.
10
The channel has to wait a week until they get a Sunday episode of MasterChef Australia.
Last night it was Bachelor In Paradise filling the 7.30pm slot. That meant of course the new reality formats on Seven and Nine got the jump of the Fiji frolics. BIP did manage 427,000, which was down marginally on the episodes screened last week. The program managed to rank #2 16-39 in its timeslot.
Leading into Paradise was The Project with 316,000 after 7pm.
ABC
Will Australia Ever Have A Black Prime Minister? was the intriguing title of a 7.40pm doco from Perth’s Joined Up Films with actor Mark Coles doing a great job hosting. The doco did 348,000 up against some big gun TV debuts.
Part three of this four-part Vera series then did 671,000 after 677,000 a week ago. That episode added another 90,000 in Consolidated 7 data.
SBS
The launch of David Baddiel On The Silk Road at 7.30pm had an audience of 210,000.
A repeat of the Secrets Of The Chocolate Factory: Inside Cadbury did 180,000.
