The first night of the first of two ratings warm-up weeks has seen Seven secure a metro share of 50.6%. The classic five-set Federer v Nadal final saw share of 57.0% in Melbourne with a metro audience over 2.6m for the clash and a national number close to 3.6m. We will probably be well into 2017 before those audience numbers are bettered, if ever this year. Just three programs had bigger audiences last year (using the preliminary numbers for last night’s tennis) – AFL and NRL Grand Finals plus State of Origin Game 1.
Federer and Nadal with Rod Laver
Seven has calculated this morning that the Men’s Open final audience was the biggest for 10 years.
The only other program to make a real impact last night after 7pm was TEN’s launch of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here, which launched with 1.09m to start with and then edged a little lower to 966,000 as the tennis got under way later in the evening. The lure of the tennis greats impacted the show a little with the numbers down on the 1.33m and 1.08m watching the Celebrity launch 12 months ago.
Nine News managed a very respectable 1.11m while 60 Minutes did 588,000.
The channel picked a very tough Sunday to launch the Lethal Weapon TV series, which didn’t do too badly with an audience of 450,000 for its 8pm timeslot.
ABC News made the top 10 with 562,000 with the final of the four-part Grand Designs: Living In The Country on 337,000.
SBS World News performed best for the channel with 174,000. Following the News at 7.30pm was a repeat of Cleopatra’s Lost Tomb which did 163,000.