By Trent Thomas and James Manning
• “They are polished turds”: The Block has its best ratings of the year… again
Primetime News
Nine News 1,069,000/1,005,000
Seven News 1,166,000/1,032,000
ABC News 685,000
10 News First 373,000 (5:00pm)/ 256,000 (6:00pm)
SBS World News 187,000 (6:30pm) 163,000 (7:00pm)
Daily current affairs
A Current Affair 759,000
7.30 572,000
The Project 296,000 (6:30pm)/532,000 (7pm)
The Drum 176,000
Breakfast TV
Sunrise 263,000
Today 263,000
News Breakfast 229,000
Late News
The Latest 138,000
Nine News Late Edition 137,000
ABC Late News 53,000
Nine
Nine was both the top primary (23.5%) and network (31.1%) last night thanks to bumper crowds from A Current Affair, The Block, and Paramedics.
The Today show has quietly been making good inroads on Sunrises dominance at breakfast, and yesterday the two programs were tied at 263,000 viewers.
A Current Affair saw Tracey Grimshaw interview Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg who said the government will have “the conversation” about opening up Australia’s borders and is preparing to make plans. The episode had 759,000 viewers.
TV producers Julian Cress and David Barbour have created some great TV over 17 seasons of The Block. Last night they delivered one of their best-ever episodes as the event hyped as TV’s greatest cheating scandal lived up to the promise. Finding a way to cover what proved to be a memorable body corporate meeting in addition to the ongoing basement build must have been a challenge. Rarely do contestants in a reality show deliver such gold for the producers. Mitch and Mark were the stars of the episode as they dealt with the fallout from the photo taken of the season schedule that was distributed to two of the teams. “They are polished turds,” said Mitch who had all the best lines when talking about Josh and Luke. Some of his other crackers: “You disgusting, ignorant, young piece of filth”, “An entitled piece of trash”, and “You piece of crap.”
The episode climaxed with the “party boys” firing back: “You’re a bitchy, two-faced grandpa and a rude rich snob.”
Tanya is also part of the cheating ring and she contributed “don’t fight with pigs, because you get dirty and they love it”, before quickly denying she said it!
Ronnie and Georgia were onlookers. Georgia helped viewers keep score during the body corporate meeting: “There were three walk-outs”. Ronnie added: “It feels like I’m on an episode of Married at First Sight.”
After setting a new series high on Tuesday with 911,000, the Wednesday episode topped that again with 941,000, capping off a brilliant week for the series where it had its four highest rating episodes of the year.
Paramedics followed with 498,000 viewers as the show continues its third season.
Seven
Home and Away was the #2 entertainment program last night and the top non-news show on Seven with 618,000.
This was followed at 7:3pm by Nurses as the factual reality program continued its first season with an audience of 401,000 tuning in.
Seven’s new high-end Aussie drama RFDS then followed with its fourth episode with 472,000 viewers which was up on last week’s 465,000.
7mate was once again the top multichannel with a share of 6.6% thanks to the Paralympics which had 225,000 viewers tune in for the night session.
10
The Project had 296,000 (6:30pm) and 532,000 (7:00pm) as the show discussed the deteriorating Covid situation in Melbourne.
The Bachelor‘s penultimate episode had 447,000 viewers as the presumptive favourite Jay was sent home after Jimmy couldn’t shake the suspicion that she was on the show for the wrong reasons. Holly and Brooke are now the last two women standing as Jimmy has one last decision to make.
ABC
The third instalment of Why Women Are Angry featured Leigh Sales interviewing Kristy Fraser-Kirk on 7.30. The interview was the key part of a look at sexual harassment in the workplace. The episode had an audience of 572,000.
Hard Quiz featured a final showdown between contestants getting lobbed questions about Gibson guitars and Hilary Clinton. The audience of 592,000 saw the guitar man win.
There some more familiar faces on Question Everything including Dane Simpson and Susie Youssef with 441,000 watching after last week’s audience was on 453,000.
Episode five of Rosehaven featured a cooking competition that was not totally unlike MasterChef with 413,000 watching Susie Yousef back on the channel as one of the contestants.
SBS
The second series of Tony Robinson’s World By Rail continued at 7.30pm. Sir Tony was visiting Mexico with 166,000 watching.
What Does Australia Really Think About was the most watched show on SBS last week with 240,000. The third episode was Obesity and it had an audience of 204,000 and was once again the most watched show on the channel last night.
