Champagne corks are popping over at Seven HQ after it won its 12th consecutive ratings year, topping both total people and the key demos for the year.
Admittedly, Seven’s share got a nice bump from this year’s coverage of both the Commonwealth Games and the Winter Olympic, a fact its rivals have been quick to acknowledge.
Excluding the Commonwealth Games coverage, Seven had 30.3 per cent of this year’s five city metro audience according to the OzTAM numbers. Nine was second with 27.2 per cent, 10 had 17.4 per cent, the ABC had 17.2 per cent and SBS finished with 7.9 per cent.
Seven also laid claim to the most watched show of 2018 – the AFL Grand Final presentation with 2,616,000 viewers. 2018’s top 20 was as follows:
Seven’s director of network programming Angus Ross said: “The final results are in, and the scale of Seven’s win is clear. The simple fact is more people watch the screens of Seven. More men, more women, more young people, more of every key demographic.
“And with the AFL and Cricket locked up until 2022, Seven can guarantee those mass audiences, and certainty for our advertisers, for years to come.”
Seven West Media chief revenue officer Kurt Burnette said: “We said we would deliver and we did. Not only did we engage with more Australians of every age group, we are the only commercial network to grow share year on year in every key demographic.
“Whichever way you slice it, whatever audience our partners want to target, Seven has more of them.
“With a record-breaking summer in front of us, and with 7plus recently becoming the Number One Commercial Free to Air BVOD platform in OzTAM VPM, the Seven Network is all set for 2019.”
Michael Healy, Nine Network director of television, said: “After a very successful 2017, our schedule this year offered audiences and advertisers greater consistency than any other network. We are proud to have delivered a strong programming slate that entertained and informed, particularly with the demographics we target. Increasingly, our viewers are choosing to watch our content on a device and a time of their choosing, a trend that we embrace and look forward to growing.”
Network 10’s chief content officer Beverley McGarvey said, “We’ve established a brilliant line-up of marquee shows that perform well across all platforms and we are looking to build on this success in 2019.
“It’s incredible that after 10 years, MasterChef Australia continues to perform strongly. And seeing shows like Have You Been Paying Attention?, Australian Survivor and Gogglebox increase their audience year on year illustrates that sticking to a winning formula often pays off.
“Our Bachelor shows – Bachelor In Paradise, The Bachelor Australia and The Bachelorette Australia – dominated our key under 50s demo and all the other key demos. They were also our top three 10 Play shows of the year.”
