TV Ratings: Trump delivers TEN’s equal-best share since MasterChef

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

Nine has won the first two nights of the penultimate survey week of the year.

While The Block steered Nine to victory last night, it was A Current Affair doing the heavy lifting last night with over 900,000 which helped keep some viewers tuned to the network despite the programs on offer at TEN.

TEN had its equal-best Monday share since the end of MasterChef in July this year.

Seven

Home and Away started its new week on 717,000 after an average audience of 701,000 last week.

The X Factor settled on the final four ahead of home visits this week and the grand final next week. The Monday audience was 697,000 which was down on last week but up on a fortnight ago.

The special Australia Beyond 2020 was hosted by Simon Reeve and Angela Cox with a slightly disappointing audience of 474,000.

Four episodes of The Big Bang Theory then went back-to-back with the first two on 288,000 and then 256,000.

Nine

A Current Affair featured an exclusive on one of its favourite characters – Salim Mehajer. The audience of 911,000 was its best since 917,000 on a Monday night four weeks ago.

RBT was one of two programs that outrated The X Factor with 744,000 watching the ob doc.

Hyde & Seek then did 595,000, up narrowly on the 498,000 watching last week.

TEN

Key to the channel’s success last night was the repackaged Donald Trump interview which was broadcast as a 60 Minutes special edition on Sunday night in the US. The show was promoted as a special edition of The Project and was hosted by The Project’s Waleed Aly, Natarsha Belling and Tommy Little. (Little looked as surprised as anyone that he made the cut!)

It was a great hour of television with CBS reporter Lesley Stahl asking the questions we all wanted answers for. It was a great performance from Trump too who seems to be winning even more fans with his new “moderate” stance, although some of his answers last night reminded viewers of positions he is not backing down on. The audience of 779,000 won the timeslot and was 400,000 better than Jamie Oliver pulled a week earlier.

TEN’s primetime started with Family Feud on 465,000.

The Project started on 430,000 and lifted to 621,000 with the show ending with a live cross to GoldieHawn in Australia on a speaking tour – where she is being introduced by The Project’s Peter Helliar.

Later in the night Have You Been Paying Attention? had its second-biggest audience ever with help from a strong lead-in. The audience of 849,000 was just short of 856,000 on July 18 this year.

ABC

Australian Story did 670,000 with an episode titled Out of the Water.

Four Corners looked at what it called Australia’s child protection crisis with 637,000 watching. The program also promoted next week’s show which features the film former Four Corner’s reporter Liz Jackson has made with her filmmaker husband about how Parkinson’s has crippled her with pain. It looks like an episode not to miss.

Media Watch featured the US election result for 635,000 followed by Q&A on 547,000.

SBS

Supervet night with 173,000 watching the 7.30pm episode followed by 160,000 watching the final episode of The Supervet: Bionic Stories.

To Top