The downward ratings trend continued for 6pm news bulletins but thanks to Perth, the 5-city totals were not too different to the previous week. The biggest changes were a 10,000 improvement for Seven Brisbane and +15,000 for Seven Perth.
That saw Seven Brisbane win at 6pm but Nine managed to win across the hour. That was despite Nine’s Friday bulletin posting another survey low.
All but two bulletins (7 Brisbane and 9 Perth) rated above the equivalent week in 2019.
Good to see some green in the table led by Sydney where Nine was up almost 30,000 and Seven 15,000. In the five cities Seven improved 20,000 and Nine 31,000.
The next biggest change was Brisbane were Seven improved by 11,000 to win both 30 minute segments after a couple of weeks where it won one but lost the hour.
Changes at 4pm in Adelaide had no discernible effect by the time 6pm came around with both bulletins within 5,000 of the the previous week’s ratings.
Despite being a big news week, 6pm news didn’t see much benefit with Seven steady and Nine dropping 38,000 from the previous week. That can partly be attributed to Brisbane that dropped 16,000 thanks to State of Origin scheduling decimating Wednesday’s numbers, however, Sydney was down a notable 17,000 as well.
Nine News dropped by 29,000 from the previous week in Melbourne, while Seven News in Sydney dropped 21,000. That dragged down the national 5-city audiences.
The result in Melbourne was close with Nine’s audience its lowest since March. Nine in Brisbane was again impacted by State of Origin recording a new low for the year. Seven Perth’s result was its highest since August.
No surprise to see the Adelaide lockdown driving higher news ratings in that market. Nine Adelaide recorded their five highest audiences of the year significantly closing the gap with Seven. Nine’s bulletin was an amazing 45% higher than the average for the 2020 survey. While Seven also posted an increase, it was just 3% higher than its average audience for this year. Also in Adelaide, ABC News was at its highest since June while even 10 News was up to its highest audience since the change to the Melbourne studio. The Project was at its highest since May.
Sydney bulletins were on par week-on week while Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth posted big drops. The biggest saw Seven Melbourne down 19,000. Nine Brisbane again lost to Seven recording a new low for the bulletin that aired at 5pm thanks to SOO 3.
On Alice Monfries Instagram post you can see Channel 9 have a screen up comparing both Nine News Sydney and Seven News Sydney ratings. Interesting that they have it up on the main news area.
This brings to an end the 40-week official ratings period.
And in the last week, Seven Sydney takes out a surprise win to break Nine’s winning streak in that market. Nine Brisbane was the only other bulletin to improve, thanks to no early pre-SOO Wednesday bulletin.
The biggest change was Nine Sydney dropping 38,000. Adelaide viewers interest in Nine’s bulletin during the lockdown lessened with the bulletin dropping 23,000 week-on-week though Seven was also down by 10,000. 85,500 for Nine is still up 65% on the same week last year.
In the 5-city market, Seven was down 39,000 and Nine 64,000 from the previous week. Numbers are starting to settle back to pre-COVID numbers for most markets.
Still to come, after the break, average audience numbers and comparisons to 2019.
It was neck in neck after Seven’s victories on Monday & Tuesday night, Nine won Wednesday & Thursday but it probably would’ve been last night’s stuffups during the Opener on Nine which got Seven over the line.
While I’ll be quick to point out that it wasn’t a huge weekly win for Seven News Sydney, after a fairly dismal year in the ratings (aside from that brief period of 2010-like ratings in April, particularly during the first half of the bulletin) I think the Martin Place newsroom will happily accept a win which prevented Nine from making a clean sweep of the 6.30pm hour & overall hour ratings.
Surely you’re taking the piss, right? I just had a look at the minute-by-minute ratings for the Sydney bulletin last night, and there was no viewer switch off during the ‘stuff-up’, or the minutes that followed.
ABC showed the biggest increase year-on-year in the 5-city market plus for three individual bulletins. Nine had the biggest improvement in Melbourne, while 10 surprised by improving the most in Perth. 10’s Brisbane and Adelaide and Nine’s Perth bulletins rated lower despite COVID pushing news ratings higher in general.
I wonder how much of the collapse in ratings for 10 News First Queensland & Adelaide happened after the presentation of bulletins was centralised interstate?
Pretty good year for ABC News at 7pm - let’s hope they continue to challenge ACA in the ratings in 2021!
Now it’s just to figure out what’s happening on weekdays - but as far as I can tell, I still don’t get why Nine Queensland seems to win those days (although there has been a trend of late with Seven winning the first half hour slot).
In terms of weeks won, Seven News had really went backwards in both Melbourne and Brisbane. Seven News Melbourne did not win a single week in the 6pm-6.30pm segment during official ratings, and the second half of the bulletin won half the number of weeks it got in 2019. COVID-19 (which caused a huge disruption to the AFL season) and the revival of Hot Seat were the main factors. Still, Melbourne news director Shaun Menegola has his work cut out to improve the bulletin’s ratings in 2021.
