Ratings
Today's Georgie Gardner, Deborah Knight and Tom Steinfort (Image: Nine Network)

Yes, MAFS (1.71 million, a 2019 high both nationally and in the metros) powered Nine to an easy win last night. But it was at the start of the day that Nine’s headache (aka Today) continued and just wouldn’t go away. The program’s audience numbers sank to their lowest in years — 269,000 nationally and a miserable 177,000 in the metros.

In fact TV number crunchers can’t remember such a low figure for Today, especially in the metros. In contrast, Seven’s Sunrise topped the half a million mark nationally (505,000) for the second day in a row and its metro audience reached 300,000. Sunrise had more viewers in the metros than Today did nationally, and came close to doubling Today’s national audience. Today has had a series of sub-300,000 national figures in recent weeks and three mornings where the metro audience had dipped under 200,000. But nothing like the big slump we saw yesterday.

In TV, high profile black holes like Today suck publicity and attention away from successes, which Nine obviously has with MAFS. Nine reports its interim results in two weeks, and while attention will be on the integration of Fairfax Media and asset sales, the answers to questions about Today’s changes (including the double header hosting of Deb Knight and Georgie Gardner) will be the ones other media will feast on.

In regional markets it was Seven News/Today Tonight on top with 502,000, from Seven’s 6pm News with 491,000, MAFS with 429,000, MKR on 417,000 and the 5.30pm bit of The Chase Australia with 323,000.

Network channel share:

  1. Nine (32.9%)
  2. Seven (28.6%)
  3. Ten (17.2%)
  4. ABC (14.8%)
  5. SBS (6.5%)

Network main channels:

  1. Nine (25.6%)
  2. Seven (21.3%)
  3. Ten (11.0%)
  4. ABC (10.7%)
  5. SBS ONE (4.1%)

Top 5 digital channels: 

  1. 10 Bold (4.0%)
  2. GO (3.3%)
  3. 7TWO (2.7%)
  4. ABC Kids/Comedy (2.5%)
  5. 9Life (2.2%)

Top 10 national programs:

  1. MAFS (Nine) — 1.711 million
  2. Seven News — 1.433 million
  3. Seven News/TT — 1.396 million
  4. MKR (Seven) — 1.233 million
  5. Nine/NBN News 6.30, Nine News — 1.179 million
  6. ACA (Nine) — 1.034 million
  7. 7pm ABC News — 917,000
  8. The Chase Australia 5.30pm (Seven) — 839,000
  9. Hard Quiz (ABC) —816,000

Top metro programs:

  1. MAFS — 1.282 million.

Losers: MKR and Today — the latter is tragic.

Metro news and current affairs:

  1. Seven News —943,000
  2. Seven News/TT — 894,000
  3. Nine News 6.30, Nine News — 889,000
  4. A Current Affair (Nine) — 726,000
  5. 7pm ABC News — 618,000
  6. 7.30 (ABC) — 494,000
  7. The Project 7pm (Ten) — 403,000
  8. 10 News First —  388,000
  9. The Project 6.30pm (Ten) — 234,000

Morning (National) TV:

  1. Sunrise (Seven) — 505,000 (Metro: 300,000) 
  2. Today (Nine) — 269,000 (Metro: 177,000) 
  3. ABC News Breakfast (ABC, ABC News) — 232,000
  4. The Morning Show (Seven) — 218,000
  5. Today Extra (Nine) — 120,000
  6. Studio 10 (Ten) — 88,000

Top five pay TV programs:

  1. GoggleBox Australia (LifeStyle) — 139,000
  2. Paul Murray Live (Sky News) — 55,000
  3. PML Late (Sky News — 44,000
  4. The Bolt Report (Sky News), T20 Cricket, NZ v India (Fox Cricket) — 43,000