ABC last night: Sonya Pemberton’s Cracking COVID doco pulled in 501,000 nationally and Ms Represented with Annabel Crabb (who was excellent) got 842,000 — two outstanding programs. Both explain why the ABC is essential — they would never be made by Nine, Seven or Ten, or the faux journalists at Sky News. Cracking COVID made all previous efforts look poor in its simplifying the complexity of what is happening and speaking to two people damaged by a virus that the likes of Senator Matt Canavan reckons we can live with.
The MasterChef winner was announced to1.19 million people; the second part of the finale (aka the lead-up) averaged 1.05 million. There was a nice 15% or so turn-on for the winner’s announcement.
Ten goes backwards from now on most nights until the meat market programs arrive. Nine’s Beauty and the Geek with 722,000 suffered a 27% or so fall from the first ep on Sunday with 1 million — dying on screen as it should (out-of-date pap).
Nine News in Sydney from 6pm to 6.30pm got to 378,000, again the highest audience across the country for any program in a single market. Nine News is now dominating Seven in Sydney in particular.
The second rugby test between Australia and France was watched by 466,000 on Gem which easily accounted for The Weakest Link (338,000) on Nine. The Tour de France was watched by 235,000 on SBS. Tonight is the third battle of the COVID’s rugby league refugees from NSW and Queensland — this time on the Gold Coast.
Breakfast: Sunrise, 461,000 nationally and 265,000 metro; Today, 361,000 and 237,000; News Breakfast, 325,000 and 216,000.
Regional top five: Seven News, 684,000; Seven News 6.30, 646,000; The Chase Australia 5.30pm, 418,000; Home and Away, 413,000; Farmer Wants a Wife, 397,000.
Network channel share:
- Seven (26.3%)
- Nine (25.9%)
- Ten (23.5%)
- ABC (15.6%)
- SBS (8.7%)
Network main channels:
- Seven (18.4%)
- Ten (17.4%)
- Nine (16.7%)
- ABC (11.3%)
- SBS ONE (6.5%)
Top 5 digital channels:
- Gem (5.2%)
- 7TWO (3.8%)
- 10 Bold (3.2%)
- 7Mate (3.0%)
- 10 Peach (2.6%)
Top 10 national programs:
- Seven News — 1.839 million
- Seven News 6.30 — 1.723 million
- Nine News — 1.445 million
- Nine News 6.30 — 1.348 million
- MasterChef Australia, winner (Ten) — 1.198 million
- A Current Affair (Nine) — 1.135 million
- 7pm ABC News — 1.111 million
- MasterChef Australia, finale (Ten) — 1.050 million
- Home and Away (Seven) — 1.048 million
- Farmer Wants a Wife (Seven) — 1.029 million
Top metro programs:
1. Seven News — 1.154 million
2. Nine News — 1.078 million
3. Seven News 6.30 — 1.077 million
Losers: The Weakest Link, again.
Metro news and current affair
- Seven News — 1.154 million
- Nine News —1.078 million
- Seven News 6.30 — 1.077 million
- Nine News 6.30 — 999,000
- ACA (Nine) — 779,000
- 7pm ABC News — 748,000
- 7.30 (ABC) — 630,000
- The Project 7pm (Ten) — 503,000
- Ten News First (ABC) — 384,000
- The Project 6.30pm (Ten) — 328,000
Morning (national) TV:
- Sunrise (Seven) — 461,000/265,000
- Today (Nine) — 361,000/237,000
- News Breakfast (ABC) — 324,000/216,000
- The Morning Show (Seven) — 275,000
- Today Extra (Nine) — 202,000
- Studio 10 (Ten) — 57,000
Top five Pay TV programs:
- Paul Murray Live, Credlin (Sky News) — 60,000
- AFL: On the Couch (Fox Footy) — 59,000
- NRL 360 (Fox League) — 56,000
- AFL 360 (Fox Footy) — 54,000
Cracking Covid was brilliant and finally revealed to us the goverment’s vaccination policy and why it went so wrong. Did we know that Scomo was putting nearly all his eggs in the UQ vaccine basket with CSL having a million ready to go in July 2020. That left Astra Zeneca as 2nd choice so we ordered 10mill as back up. Now we see why cocky arrogant Scomo told Pfizer to take a hike – once UQ vaccine fell over, he could, of course, have eaten crow and gone back to Pzizer but that’s not his style. End result, Australia screwed and last on the vaccine league table. Well done Scomo,
Funny, but my take on both Cracking Covid and MsRepresented was that that they both suffered from the same disease, being largely content-lite nicey-nice fluffy personality-focussed pieces on important subjects that really were worthy of some meaty telejournalism. From Cracking Covid, could anyone work out how biomedical research scientists work? And MsRepresented seemed somehow, coy, almost as if the issue was still being avoided. In contrast, the earlier ABC program Firestarter on the Bangarra troupe showed how, since it was in my opinion much harder and with real punch and insight.