Glenn Dyer's TV Ratings, Aug 31, 2017

Nine claim the night, but it was a particularly solid showing from ABC's comedy line-up.

Nine’s night, thanks to The Block. The ABC had a solid night though, with Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell averaging 1.05 million national viewers from 8.30pm and Utopia 1.04 million. The ABC’s new comedy Get Krackin averaged 607,000 nationally from 9.30 pm and won the half hour slot. Ten repeated The Wrong Girl from last week at 9.40 pm — it could only manage 237,000 national viewers. Its second episode is on tonight at 8.40pm.

Ten’s Offspring had another weak night — 734,000 nationally — against 919,000 national viewers for The Bachelor from 7.30pm to 8.40pm. In fact the ABC won the slots from 8.30 through to 10pm. In the 6pm news battle — a one off (?) win for Seven over Nine in Melbourne — 280,000 to 269,000.

In the regions, Seven News was tops with 567,000, followed by Seven News/Today Tonight with 493,000, with Home and Away third with 478,000, then The Block in fourth with 435,000 and fifth, Border Security with 414,000. And loved the way Seven started the latest round of repeats of The Vicar of Dibley on 7TWO last night at 7.30pm. There just isn’t enough content to fill all these channels. Ten has restarted repeats of Hogan’s Heroes at 6pm on One, before a double of M*A*S*H from 6.30pm.

It’s the curse of choice. Too many channels to chose from; and those channels have to carry content of some description. As Amazon and Netflix are showing (spending close to $US11 billion a year) original content is expensive and eventually the money will not be there as viewing and membership levels stabilise. So ads appear and more programs are repeated (there is no money to be made putting a black hole to air), viewers (especially younger ones) get upset and migrate elsewhere, and the cycle continues. And if actors and others (such as Jerry Seinfeld) have profit shares in their programs, they become multi-millionaires after their the rights to broadcast their programs are resold every few years.

Tonight — World Cup Soccer qualifier for the Australian men’s team on Nine’s GO from Japan, the start of the final NRL round of the year on Nine and the AFL Footy Show up against The Front Bar on Seven.

Network channel share: