• Nine’s honeymoons outrate the TEN’s Big Bash semifinal
• Married At First Sight’s biggest audience makes Nine #1
• Big Bash semifinal sees audience over 850,000 later in evening
• Home and Away marathon sees audience just below 600,000
• Knightfall launch makes top 30, attracts 215,000 across two hours
Seven
Home and Away’s week ended with four back-to-back episodes between 7pm and 9pm. Seven showed more eps last night than it did across the first three nights this week. The week’s numbers:
Monday 796,000, Tuesday 733,000, Wednesday 682,000, Thursday 593,000 (Average audience across the two hours.)
The rest of primetime was largely taken up by the 1992 Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner movie The Bodyguard, which did 280,000.
Nine
A Current Affair was on 792,000. Brady Halls was on location where the Beaumont children re-investigation is under way and Reid Butler was having fun with home assistants.
After six weddings across three nights, the first couples to tie the knot on Married At First Sight started their honeymoons. The show attracted its biggest audience so far this season.
The series’s first week for 2018 looks like this:
Monday 912,000, Tuesday 907,000, Wednesday 929,000, Thursday 995,000.
Wedding fever continued on the channel with the 2009 movie Bride Wars, which did 254,000.
TEN
Lisa Wilkinson made her second appearance on The Project on a night that started with an interview with a former “grid girl” about the decision to stop employing them at the Australian F1 Grand Prix. The (sort of) sporting theme continued with Adam Gilchrist and Mark Waugh at Perth Stadium promoting the cricket final. There were no records broken on Wilkinson’s second episode though with the 7pm audience not far above 500,000.
It was the first night of finals for the Big Bash League with Perth Scorchers playing Hobart Hurricanes in the first semifinal. The Hurricanes averaged 10 and over and the Scorchers fell well short. It would have made some riveting TV if they got closer and would have given viewers 400 runs in 40 overs. The numbers weren’t bad though – 788,000 for the first session and then 866,000 for the second. The second session audience for the first semi last year had an average audience of 913,000 when played on January 24.
ABC
Classic Countdown has been running this week at 6pm nightly and clips last night ranged from The Damned to John Farnham with 110,000 watching. Listen to Andrew Mercado talk about the Countdown on the latest Mediaweek TV podcast now available on iTunes.
Rob Brydon‘s British panel show Would I Lie To You? followed News and 7.30 with panellists I know little about. They told some good stories though for the 410,000 watching
The channel is running older episodes of Call The Midwife at present with 349,000 last night ahead of season six starting February 15.
More medical drama followed with The Good Karma Hospital on 240,000.
SBS
The seemingly never-ending supply of Great British Railroad Journeys saw Michael Portillo in Lincolnshire as he travelled from Spalding to Grimsby. 243,000 were watching the 10th episode of the 25 in season four.
Episode four of Shane Delia’s Recipe For Life then did 141,000.
Bit of excitement at 8.30pm for some viewers with the premiere of Knightfall, which has yet to finish its first season of 10 episodes in the US. The series is made by A&E Studios for the US History channel. Two episodes screened last night with an average audience of 215,000 for both.
