• Triple room reveal keeps Nine and The Block #1
• Breakfast TV ratings: Key market data reveals Nine’s concern
• Sunday Night at 7pm and The Royals drive Seven’s Sunday
• Lisa Wilkinson’s Serena Williams interview lifts Sunday Project
Breakfast TV watch
It certainly doesn’t attract the biggest TV crowds. However, breakfast TV is more examined than any other timeslot. Karl Stefanovic attracts many of the headlines, as have both Sam Armytage and David Koch in the past. More recently it has been Karl Stefanovic again. The security of employment is talked about more for breakfast TV hosts than anyone else – with the possible exception of Nine’s Sam Newman.
Mediaweek is starting this daily examination of the program ratings in response to massive interest in the timeslots! Seven has long dominated the national numbers, but the key stats to also watch are who is winning in Sydney and Melbourne.
Breakfast TV averages metro
Week 38
Sunrise 264,000 (Sydney 74,000, Melbourne 63,000)
Today 230,000 (Sydney 68,000, Melbourne 56,000)
Week 39
Sunday
Sunrise 269,000 (Sydney 80,000, Melbourne 80,000)
Today 223,000 (Sydney 64,000, Melbourne 66,000)
Sunday Ratings
Seven
After winning the 6pm timeslot, the channel’s best was 696,000 for Sunday Night, which made a rare appearance in the 7pm timeslot. The numbers were up from 611,000 a week ago. Last night featured a compelling story from Matt Doran, which filled more than half the episode, with an interview with Mary Kay Letourneau, a 34-year-old US teacher who made headlines when she seduced a 12-year-old boy.
Seven then showed the first episode of the US series made with the ABC network and People magazine, The Story Of The Royals, which launched with 493,000.
Nine
The channel again dominated the start of the ratings week with massive crowds again for The Block. The popular triple room reveals showed off some very impressive renovations work, but some pretty big fails too. The audience of 1.26m was down on last Sunday’s 1.34m.
60 Minutes followed, featuring the Nine Network’s political editor Chris Uhlmann speaking with former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who commented Australian politics has become an international joke, the “coup capital of the world”. The audience of 715,000 was a good result, bigger than Sunday Night’s audience earlier in the night.
TEN
The Sunday Project was the only primetime offering to make the top 20.
The much-discussed Lisa Wilkinson interview with Serena Williams attracted a bigger crowd with 404,000 watching after 315,000 tuned in after 7pm last week. Highlight of the interview, as it is always, was when a publicist stepped in asking Wilkinson to stop asking about the controversial US Open.
At 7.30pm the channel went with a movie – the 2006 family animation Happy Feet – that did 140,000.
ABC
Part one of Joanna Lumley’s Silk Road Adventure launched with 576,000. It’s the latest of Lumley’s wonderful global travel adventures and tracks her trip from Venice to the Chinese border. She and her team must have been up early to see her on the streets and canals of Venice with few others in sight.
The latest episode of Rake then did 432,000, down on 505,000 last week.
SBS
Two repeats led the ratings at SBS – Rome’s Invisible City with 180,000 and then Easter Island: The Truth Revealed on 148,000.
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