Going by the numbers it was a Seven victory on Wednesday night, but the ABC is achieving a lot by spending relatively little.
A midweek slump on hump day for Wednesday’s breakfast and evening news/current affairs programs, with the tune-in numbers down from earlier in the week and a touch lower than the Wednesday before.
The ABC’s Hard Quiz again displayed its dominance with 956,000 viewers, effortlessly overpowering Nine’s tepid copycat reboot of The Weakest Link, which couldn’t even attract 400,000 viewers the night before. 7.30 did well with a national average of 908,000 nationally, and 802,000 caught a dash of full-frontal male nudity on Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell. 882,000 was an OK get for Seven’s Big Brother, but MasterChef struggled on Ten with 720,000.
Between 7.30pm and 9pm at least, the ABC lorded it over the so-called commercial networks by averaging 891,000 national viewers and topping Seven, Nine and Ten. It was Seven’s night in total people and the main channels, but if we’re talking money spent v ratings gained it was victory for the ABC. Sometimes it doesn’t take a lot of money to amuse and hold viewers — just a bit of wit and creativity, which remain in short supply at Seven, Nine and Ten.
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