Glenn Dyer's TV Ratings: The Block and the cricket help Nine turn everyone else's ratings dreams to Ashes

The Block and the cricket help Nine turn everyone else’s ratings dreams to Ashes

Even though it might not have reached the same premiere numbers as last year, the return of The Block helped Nine win the night.

Glenn Dyer

Aug 05, 2019

The Block returned to Nine last night and helped it win the night convincingly (1.33 million nationally), aided by the first session of day four of the first Ashes Test — 792,000 nationally on 9Gem. With the audience on GO and other digital channels, it meant that well over 2.1 million people in total were watching Nine from around 8pm for an hour or so before viewing numbers started tapering off.

But The Block’s return audience of 1.33 million last night was down 15% from 2018’s 1.57 million (which was the highest series opening audience since 2014). Even the audience reach figure Nine loves to trumpet these days saw a big drop off — from 1.94 million in 2018 to 1.64 million last night. The audience fall was spread between metro — 991,000 last night against 1.161 million in 2018 — the regionals which had 385,000 against 414,000.

Australia’s Got Talent pulled in 1.25 million viewers which was solid for Seven. The ABC started the dramatisation of Robert Barrett’s Les Norton books series last night — 8th nationally with 799,000. Australian Survivor on Ten pulled in 792,000 — enough to push Ten into third on total people but 4th behind the ABC in the main channels. Insiders, 538,000 from 9 to 10am. In the regions Seven News won with 527,000 from Australia’s Got Talent with 436,000, then Nine News with 385,000, Sunday Night with 363,000 and The Block with 342,000.

Network channel share: