TV Ratings May 18: Nine wins with live NRL

Mediaweek editor James Manning looks at last night’s TV ratings

• Nine wins with live NRL plus strong News and ACA numbers
• TEN proves you can still draw a Thursday crowd: MasterChef 900,000

With a win last night, Nine has won five of the last six Thursdays thanks largely to the power of live NRL coverage in Brisbane and Sydney.

TEN and MasterChef have been Nine’s biggest competitors in the past few weeks with TEN last night proving you can still find a big national audience for a non-sport program this late in the week.

Seven

Multiple Home and Away episodes tonight on Seven’s ever-changing Thursday night schedule. The soapie ended the week with an average Thursday audience of 635,000.

Holiday Horrors Caught On Camera actually had some amazing footage but could only attract 339,000.

There were plenty of The Big Bang Theory episodes on offer last night with multiple episodes on both 7mate (early) and Seven (later).

There were plenty of laughs in AFL markets from The Front Bar. The low budget sports comedy show attracted just 77,000 though, 59,000 of them in Melbourne.

Nine

A Current Affair covered the breaking news about the big tax scam, also a dodgy real estate agent charging big commissions and as promised it was all over the Kelly Landry application for an AVO against Anthony Bell. The Thursday episode manage to post a crowd over 800,000.

Southern markets saw RBT at 7.30pm while northern markets got live NRL. The football delivered an audience of 383,000 – 208,000 in Sydney and 175,000 in Brisbane.

The Footy Shows had a metro network audience of 449,000 – 104,000 in Sydney and 192,000 in Melbourne.

TEN

Casey Donovan was a guest on The Project with a 7pm audience of 669,000.

MasterChef said goodbye to its oldest contestant – Benita Orwell – with a very strong 935,000 watching the Thursday episode.

A new episode of Law & Order: SVU pushed close to 500,000 after MasterChef, the US drama’s biggest audience since August last year, while a second repeat episode did 388,000.

ABC

The Checkout was just short of half a million after 8pm.

The final episode of Seven Types Of Ambiguity did 355,000. (It was only part-way through the final episode that I realised there would not be seven eps!) The consolidated numbers have lifted the audience slightly across the weeks, but without knowing the iview audience results it is hard to get a feel for how the program really performed.

SBS

Great British Railway Journeys dominated again with 284,000 watching the 30-minute episode at 7.30pm.

Italy Unpacked managed 203,000 and then Medici: Master Of Florence was on 114,000.

It is a challenge tracking the ratings for The Chefs’ Line with three episodes screened yesterday. The biggest audience was 105,000, which must have been for the 8pm episode. Others went to air at 2pm and 6pm.

To Top