For all the hype it garnered, the Leader’s Debate: The People’s Forum only managed to get 175,000 people tuning in to Sky News to watch it, according to OzTam’s overnight TV ratings. No doubt our two prospective leaders are well aware most Australians only tune in to the news sound bites thus their penchant for speaking in quotable grabs.
Of course, with all things subscription, it’s a relative concept. Wednesday night’s People’s Forum was the highest-rated debate ever for Sky News, eclipsing even the infamous Tony Abbott v Julia Gillard debate all the way back in 2010; the previous record holder.
Speaking of news, it was Seven (974,000 and 936,000 five-city metro) and Nine (782,000 and 765,000) for their respective 6.00pm and 6.30pm slots that proved the top four programs for the evening.
Meanwhile, The Voice continued its winning ways (629,000 five-city metro) being the top entertainment program even though it shed a further 106,000 compared with Tuesday night.
Lego Masters attracted 562,000 (five-city metro) viewers, a drop of just 10,000 viewers on its Tuesday night outing. Over on Ten, Masterchef slumped to 376,000 viewers, down 60,000.
With regards to overall share, Seven once again won the night, with 22.8 per cent for its primary channel and 30.7 per cent overall.
Nine got 19.1 per cent of all eyeballs on its primary channel and 28.4 per cent in total. Ten managed just 10.6 per cent on its main channel and 16.3 per cent on all channels. The ABC got 11.9 and 16.4 per cent, a big improvement on Tuesday thanks to comedy duo Hard Quizz (497,000 five-city metro) and Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell (401,000).
SBS managed 5.0 and 8.7 per cent respectively.
