The first weeknight of summer ratings was good news and bad news for TEN.
Its move to extend The 7PM Project has paid off with 826,000 viewers. The network is airing one hour episodes on Mondays and Fridays through summer as a way of attracting new eyeballs to the show. Last night it spent longer on topics and didn’t have its first commercial break for 15 minutes. It also tweaked the set with more orange and brown hues.
But it wasn’t all going their way. Futurama dropped to 664,000 while Supernatural was only 514,000 and 532,000.
Presumably viewers still aren’t aware of where new shows are sitting on summer schedules. Consistent titles including The Mentalist and Destroyed in Seconds fared better with 1.22m and 1.17m respectively.
Elders with Andrew Denton was very strong on 1.00m.
SBS, which claims to perform best in summer, lived up to that word with Man Vs Wild eclipsing Top Gear, 708,000 to 672,000. Repeat or no repeat, it is a stellar achievement.
A very entertaining first episode of Burying Brian was 348,000 later at night for Nine.