Glenn Dyer's TV Ratings, Feb 06, 2017

Seven’s night was the diet (ratings) version, with a slimmed down MKR doing the job, helped by another good night for Seven News from 6pm. MKR had 1.68 million people nationally, Seven News, 1.67 million, Married at First Sight had 1.28 million for Nine and Ten’s I’m A Celebrity managed 1.09 million. All OK without being brilliant. […]

Seven’s night was the diet (ratings) version, with a slimmed down MKR doing the job, helped by another good night for Seven News from 6pm. MKR had 1.68 million people nationally, Seven News, 1.67 million, Married at First Sight had 1.28 million for Nine and Ten’s I’m A Celebrity managed 1.09 million. All OK without being brilliant. 60 Minutes, featuring Malcolm Turnbull’s rushed attempt to square the ledger with Donald Trump, managed 1.09 million viewers – or more than 190,000 less than Married.

We have the year’s first flop. Lethal Weapon on Nine managed only 528,000 national viewers (337,000 metro and 191,000 regional).

Amid all the justified back slapping and self congratulations about the undoubted success of the first round of the women’s AFL competition, a couple of points need to be made. The more than 50,000 people who watched the games at the ground could be explained by the fact that admission was free. But what was far more impressive was the near 1.8 million people who watched on Seven, 7mate and Fox Sports over the weekend .

We should be cautious about the TV ratings for the Friday night first game. The 771,000 metro and regional figures were pretty good, and in one respect they were much better than any of the print writers understood – the 424,000 who watched the game in Melbourne on Friday night was the highest audience in any market around the country on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, which is no mean achievement.

And while the Saturday night viewing figures fell to 511,000 nationally (361,000 in the metros and 150,000 in the regionals) and the Melbourne audience had fallen to 268,000, it was still the second biggest TV audience on Saturday anywhere in the country. That sort dominance is loved by advertisers.

A further 430,000 watched the games on Fox Sports over the weekend – 123,000 on Friday night (making a total of 894,000 for the first game), 118,000 and 75,000 for the second and third on Saturday and 114,000 for yesterday’s 4th game. That is around 1.79 million people who watched the games over the weekend on Seven and Fox Sports.

Network channel share: