• The Block’s bathroom reveal gives Nine 7th Sunday win in 8 weeks
• Hell’s Kitchen celebs out-rate Survivor, but no match for Blockheads
• Tarzan swings out of Survivor as Sunday episode holds above 600,000
See full ratings figures on the Mediaweek Morning Report here.
Another critical Sunday night for the commercial FTA broadcasters with Seven taking on Nine’s The Block and TEN’s Survivor with a combo of Hell’s Kitchen and Blue Murder: Killer Cop.
The new programs failed to dent The Block’s audience who swarmed to the show for the bathroom renovation reveals. Nine subsequently narrowly won the night, giving the broadcaster its seventh Sunday primary channel win in the past eight weeks.
While Nine won the primary race by just over a point, the combined channel share duel was even closer – with Nine narrowly winning, 0.1 ahead of Seven.
TEN was again caught in the crossfire as the channel recorded only its second single figure Sunday share since April.
Seven
The launch episode of Hell’s Kitchen Australia featured host Marco Pierre White gently basting his celebrity contestants. The audience didn’t seem convinced though and the show debuted with 817,000, well down on the 1.08m watching he launch of Zumbo’s Just Desserts last year. And that show didn’t end well. While it’s too early to call Hell’s Kitchen, its seems chefs who are much-loved in the MasterChef environment don’t necessarily work removed from it. After 1.33m were watching Sunday Night a week ago, the numbers dropped half a million to just over 800,000.
Part one of Blue Murder: Killer Cop followed and featured a very impressive cast alongside Richard Roxburgh and Toni Collette. Dan Wyllie has never had a dud performance and he was surrounded by some of our other favourites including Matt Nable, Emma Booth and Aaron Jeffrey. The audience of 717,000 is a bit of a disappointment even if it is good these days in terms of Aussie drama ratings. The Endemol Shine production deserved a much bigger audience and the result will not make broadcast executives much more confident about commissioning miniseries.
A special called The Battle For Mosul followed, which was hosted by Seven’s Denham Hitchcock with 184,000 watching.
Nine
Our early tip for success on The Block, Ronnie and Georgia, finished third last night, overtaken by winners Josh and Elyse. It was revenge for the bathroom winners after their run-in with the winners of the first bedroom renovation. The audience was very curious about how the bathrooms would look after a tumultuous week when it looked like several teams would fail to deliver. In the end Hannah and Clint failed to deliver on time and were marked accordingly. The Sunday audience grew from 1.11m for the launch episode a week ago to 1.21m last night.
60 Minutes slipped just under 800,000 with reports from Tara Brown and Liz Hayes.
Killer Women followed with 383,000 and the late slot went to Australian Crime Stories (aka Tough Nuts) with 186,000.
TEN
Just as things were starting to get interesting on Australian Survivor, Mark (aka Tarzan) was voted off the island after helping one of his fellow contestants survive. The repercussions could be interesting to watch. The Sunday audience just managed to survive above 600,000 after the series launched a week ago with 639,000.
The final episode of Bull did 303,000 after 276,000 last week.
ABC
Grand Designs New Zealand made the top 10 with 535,000 after 523,000 a week ago.
The penultimate episode of Poldark screened to 482,000 after 474,000 a week ago. The final episode screened in the UK earlier this morning so people wanting to avoid spoilers will need to be careful this week.
SBS
The timely screening of the doco Dunkirk: New Evidence did 277,000 at 8.30pm.
An hour earlier Treasures Decoded was not far behind on 262,000.
Now moved an hour later, the You Are Here doco series featured Connection To Country with 56,000 watching.