Seven on ratings roll as audience growth continues Camille Alarcon
Week three of the TV ratings race has seen the Seven Network continue to edge ahead of the Nine Network during prime time viewing in the Sydney, Adelaide and Perth markets.
Seven took out the overall national lead with 29.3%, while Nine came in with 28.1% and Network Ten 21.9%, between 6pm to midnight.
As in the two previous ratings weeks, Seven’s Desperate Housewives, Lost and Dancing with the Stars dominated, taking out the top three program rankings respectively, although Nine occupied six out of the top ten shows watched last week.
On Monday night, Seven not surprisingly maintained its dominance with Desperate Housewives with 2.33 million viewers. On Tuesday, Dancing with the Stars continued to be a winner with 1.84 million, while the return of Nine’s Survivor series only just managed to pass the one million mark. But Nine still had a good night with CSI and the debut of CSI: New York, both programmes attracting over 1.5 million viewers each.
Thursday night remains strong for Seven, with the triple programming wins between 7:30pm to 10:30pm of My Restaurant Rules, Lost and The Amazing Race. Seven lifted its share for the evening from last year’s 19.61% to 31.51%. Nine and Ten by comparison were down four and five points respectively.
Ten hasn’t had a strong start to the year, with the end now in sight for the Aussie version of Queer Eye for a Straight Guy coupled with the lacklustre interest so far for The X Factor. It has still maintained its lead in the 16-39 year old demographic during the third ratings week and year to date, but it’s down in overall commercial share among all people by 4% compared to the first three ratings weeks of last year.
The pleasing results for Seven has prompted the use of a floating rate card—usually practised during the Christmas off season—with the network now counting on supply and demand forces to push up ad rates during its more popular programs.
