Monday saw the Australian broadcast of the first episode of Downton Abbey’s final season, and despite the program concluding last year in the UK it grabbed almost 850,000 metro viewers on Seven last night.
It was helped by a healthy lead-in as My Kitchen Rules continued its dominant run at 7.30pm with 1,687,000 tuning in combining to help Seven to a 34.3% audience share. Though down from the previous Monday, it was still well clear of Nine that also saw an audience drop to 23.7%. ABC (19.0%) improved and Ten lifted to 18.6% while SBS was steady on 4.4%.
Seven News (1,116,000 and 1,060,000) and Home and Away (946,000) were also timeslot winners for Seven with The Chase earlier on 552,000 and 358,000.
Nine News (1,054,000 and 1,017,000) got Nine off to a good start with A Current Affair next best on 885,000. Australia’s Got Talent (736,000) and The Farmer Wants a Wife (557,000) were both down over 100,000 week-on-week with Who Do You Think You Are? that followed on 244,000. Earlier, _Hot Sea_t had 484,000.
ABC saw improvements for all programming with ABC News (870,000) and 7:30 (747,000) showing big increases. Australian Story (728,000) was steady and Media Watch improved to 655,000 and Four Corners to 637,000 with Q & A (534,000) back in the top twenty this week.
I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here was down to 682,000 for Ten with The Project next best on 652,000 and 422,000. Earlier, Family Feud had 512,000 and Ten Eyewitness News 477,000. CSI Cyber was up 91,000 from the previous week to 450,000 with a second episode pre-empting Elementary boosting late night numbers with 295,000.
Does Online Dating Really Work? (155,000) and Trawlermen (151,000) were best for SBS.
In the closely fought breakfast timeslot, Today (308,000) edged out Sunrise (304,000) with ABC News Breakfast on 81,000 and 51,000.
See Monday 15 February 2016 for a more detailed look at the ratings numbers in the Media Spy forums.
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