More people tuned into watch live TV last night, starting early in the day with hundreds of thousands more tuning into breakfast and morning programs for news and information updates.
That gave Today its highest national audience in almost three years — 442,000. But more people tuned in to Seven’s Sunrise which increased its lead over Today with 652,000 national viewers. ABC News Breakfast had its all time record high of 437,000. Seven’s Morning Show had a high of 408,000 and Nine’s Today Extra had a new high of 256,000.
But not Ten’s Studio 10 — its audience dipped a few thousand from last week to 74,000 yesterday. All up, over 1.5 million people watched breakfast TV on Nine, Seven and the ABC yesterday — nearly double several weeks ago. And a factoid that says it all: just 12,000 people tuned in nationally on ABC News for question time from the House of Reps yesterday.
Last night, Seven’s 6pm hour of news added 257,000 on top of last week’s 100,000 extra viewers, to average 1.89 million. Seven also started a two-week run of an hour extra from 7pm to 8pm on COVID-19, averaging 1.04 million national viewers. Nine’s 6pm hour averaged 1.560 million, up 190,000 from a week ago when its audience leapt 140,000. ACA’s audience jumped to 1.26 million from 1.16 million, which is better than the 53,000 the previous Monday night. Nine’s 9pm COVID-19 special averaged 766,000, down from the debut episode a week ago of 833,000.
Elsewhere, the 7pm ABC News averaged 1.39 million, up 149,000, while 7.30 averaged 1.32 million, up from 1.24 million, while SBS and Ten saw rises too. All up, that’s an extra 949,000 viewers last night for news and current affairs.
All the networks were winners as viewers returned to them in their hundreds of thousands from early in the morning to late evening for the latest news on what was a very fraught day of developments.
Network channel share:
- Nine (30.0%)
- Seven (25.0%)
- ABC (21.5%)
- Ten (17.1%)
- SBS (6.4%)
Network main channels:
- Nine (22.8%)
- Seven (16.9%)
- ABC (16.0%)
- Ten (11.3`%)
- SBS ONE (3.9%)
Top 5 digital channels:
- 10 Bold (3.7%)
- Gem (3.3%)
- ABC News, 7TWO, 7mate (3.0%)
Top 10 national programs:
- Seven News— 1.928 million
- Seven News 6.30 — 1.866 million
- Nine/NBN News 6.30 — 1.557 million
- Nine News — 1.563 million
- MAFS (Nine) — 1.495 million
- 7pm ABC News — 1.241 million
- 7.30 (ABC) — 1.328 million
- ACA (Nine) — 1.261 million
- Seven News: The Latest —1.045 million
- The Chase Australia – 5.30pm (Seven) — 1.005 million
Top metro programs:
- Seven News — 1.234 million
- Seven News 6.30 — 1.211 million
- Nine News — 1.193 million
- Nine News 6.30 — 1.171 million
- MAFS — 1.124 million
Metro news and current affairs:
- Seven News — 1.234 million
- Seven News 6.30 — 1.211 million
- Nine News — 1.193 million
- Nine News 6.30 — 1.171 million
- ABC News — 955,000
- 7.30 (ABC) — 911,000
- ACA (Nine) —890,000
- Australian Story (ABC) — 681,000
- Seven News: the Latest — 649,000
- The 7pm Project (Ten) — 623,000
Morning (National) TV:
- Sunrise: National: 652,000, Metro: 379,000
- Today: National: 442,000, Metro: 314,000
- News Breakfast (ABC, ABC News) —437,000
- The Morning Show (Seven) —408,000
- Today Extra (Nine) —256,000
- Studio 10 (Ten) — 74,000
Q&A was excellent last night…what happened to their viewing numbers, Glenn?
I was one of those 12000 who tuned into Parliamentary Question Time, but not for long.
A Dorothy Dixer asking Morrison to tell us all what good work the Morrison government has been doing to alleviate the suffering of Australian people over the coronavirus drove me away.
Which reminds me, wasn’t there an enquiry into Question Time with a view to making it relevant by getting rid of Dixers and requiring real questions to get real answers ?