The battle for 6pm was a lot closer this week. Seven News was impacted by the start of the First Test and saw its audience fall by 37,000 while Nine News was up by 23,000.
That saw Nine win across all east coast markets with improved shares. In Syndey Nine was up 13,000 as Seven dropped by 18,000.
In Melbourne, Nine continued its winning streak, up by 8,000 to Seven’s 7,000 drop. The week was Seven’s lowest rated for the year and the first time below the 200k mark and featured Seven’s lowest rated bulletin of the year on Friday. Six of the year’s lowest rated bulletins have been in the last three weeks for Seven.
In Brisbane, cyclone coverage was a feature of the week with Nine up by 6,000 breaking Seven’s nine week run of wins. It also saw Nine reach 27 weeks won for the calendar year to claim victory based on that measure.
Adelaide bucked the trend and saw Seven up by 3,000 and Nine down by 3,000.
In Perth Nine News was down by less than 1,000 as Seven’s bulletin dropped by 10,000.
Seven News numbers recovered this week while Nine News was down 24,000 in the 5-city market.
Sydney saw the biggest change with Seven up 18,000 to beat Nine that was up 2,000.
Seven Melbourne also did 6,000 better this week while Nine slipped 4,000.
Seven Brisbane was steady but Nine lost 16,000 to its lowest rated week of the year including two of the three lowest rated bulletins. However, despite Seven’s win it was also that bulletin’s lowest 2023 rating. Nine is still slightly ahead of Seven in the average audience for the full calendar year.
Both bulletins lost ground in Adelaide as Nine’s was down 25% from week 51 of 2022.
In Perth, Nine was steady while Seven lost 11,000 to be down 18% from last year.
Preliminary results for the final week of the year and congratulations to Seven News for another 52 weeks won in the 5-city market. Note that the numbers for Sydney and Melbourne will need more than the usual adjustment due to late starts on several nights.
Overall it was a good week for news despite the week including one of the lowest rating bulletins of the year on Christmas Day. Seven’s result was up 25,000 while Nine was up 54,000.
Seven improved most in Brisbane, up by 18,000 and Melbourne up 12,000. Nine’s Sydney bulletin was up 21,000 while Melbourne improved 24,000. Brisbane and Adelaide also lifted, both by 10,000.
Perth bucked the trend with Sven down 2,000 and Nine losing 10,000 week-on-week.
Nine News won all four weeks in December in Melbourne, putting a huge dent on Seven News’ dominance in the city. Could be the sign of things to come in 2024.
That’s also five weeks in a row if you include the final week of ratings. Seems like the announcement of the weeknight handover from Hitch to Alicia/Tom might’ve had something to do with it.
As promised the full year’s average audiences. Also included are the weekend bulletin results that have their own story to tell. The full year numbers are generally lower than the survey period except Adelaide where they are identical! I can’t separate the two bulletins in Brisbane as I have used the rounded numbers from the published data. Perhaps one of the networks might like to claim a win based on perhaps less than 100 people?
In the comparison to 2022, looking at Nine News Adelaide you can see why Tipping Point is moving into the 5pm timeslot with Nine down 20% while in Perth you can see equally why it might not as it is Seven down 15%.
Updated (based on time corrected Seven News numbers for last week):
It was a good start for both bulletins with improved numbers from the previous week. Nine had a very narrow win in Sydney and an easy win to start the year in Melbourne while Seven won Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.
In a familiar pattern Nine Adelaide was down 22% while Nine Perth was up 24% compared to week one of 2023.
With the new coding system, we will have to settle for just comparing the full hour without any access to the 30 minute breakdowns.
Thank you.
Just a thought… given the reduced data to display now, is it possible to add Saturday/Sundays on the same post? Although Sunday is at the beginning of the week and Saturday at the end…
I don’t think just adding the weekend bulletins themselves would add much as they can easily be judged side by side looking at the overnight ratings as opposed to the average Mon-Fri that needs to be calculated. There could be some merit though if the running tally of weeks won was added to the ratings numbers. I will see what it looks like tomorrow when today’s numbers are released.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens next week in Melbourne with the Australian Open. Usually Seven’s numbers go up unless there is an Australian playing as a lead into the news.
Ratings dropped in week two, Seven by 40,000 and Nine by 17,000.
Nine had a narrow in in Sydney but continued to overperform in Melbourne ahead of the launch of a new presenting team next week. In both AEDT markets Nine was up 12% year-on-year while Seven was up 3% in Sydney, the Melbourne bulletin was down 7%.
The other three markets went to Seven with Brisbane up an impressive 8% from last year. Adelaide saw both bulletins up from the previous week though for Nine the bulletin was down 31% from week two of 2023. Hopefully Tipping Point Australia can help reverse that trend. Perth saw drops for both bulletins with BBL on 7Mate impactive main channel ratings.
I will post the table with Sunday and Saturday numbers tomorrow.
I reckon there’s been some general swing back to GTV News for some reason this summer, regardless of what happens with the new presenters, Aussie Open and Tipping Point, not seen for them since perhaps the heights of COVID or pre-2019 even.
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Is HSV News’ purple patch starting to fade? What do we think about Bec Maddern (who was deemed a good get a couple of years back and arrived at a big news time - remember the whole Novak Djokovic deportation saga, the leaked tape of Mike Amor swearing and ridiculing him and the Ash Barty / Kyrgios-Kokkinakis / Rafa Nadal ‘fairytale’ wins and then Nth NSW floods to name a few). Do we think Bec is worse or better solo or is it actually Mike who is better received and/or better with Bec or him alone?
