Day one of the Australian Open tennis on Seven got off to a slow start yesterday with the initial broadcast down nearly a third on last year. But media buyers aren't fussed.
The broadcast attracted 858,000 metro viewers, down 31% from 1.246 million at the same time last year, according to preliminary overnight figures from OzTAM. Seven's commercial share was also down 9.5 percentage points from 40.8% to 31.3%.
Carat chief executive Simon Ryan said while it was slightly lower than expected, he was "not at all fussed". "It's an interesting first-day result, but like most popular Australian sporting events they tend to build rapidly over time," he said.
Ryan said he expected tonight's round one match-up between world number one Rafael Nadal and Australian Bernard Tomic would attract much bigger numbers and make up for last night's ratings.
A Seven spokesperson said: "The coverage dominated across all dayparts. It's a little early to make comparisons based on last year's numbers – different players and different opening matches.
"The audience numbers are very positive for an opening day. We're looking forward to the coming 13 days as the tournament unfolds." He added that Lleyton Hewitt played on night one last year, which could account for the audience differential – Hewitt plays Italian Andreas Seppi today.
MEC chief executive Peter Vogel agreed. "There shouldn't really be any reason for the ratings to be down that amount. There are only two or three things that would affect numbers that much," he said. "It might be the games, it might be the weather, or it might be something on a competing station. It's not like people are going to lose interest in tennis. You've got to give it at least two or three nights."
Seven News was the number one program for the night with 1.27 million viewers, followed by Nine News (1.233 million), Nine News 6:30 (1.176 million), Today Tonight (994,000) and A Current Affair (991,000). In terms of free-to-air audience share, Network Seven came out on top with 33.6%, followed by Nine (27.5%), ABC (17.7%), Ten (17%) and SBS (4.1%).
Monday 13 January 2014
1. Seven News – 1.27 million
2. Nine News – 1.233 million
3. Nine News 6:30 – 1.176 million
4. Today Tonight (Seven) – 994,000
5. A Current Affair (Nine) – 991,000
6. Australian Open Night 1 – 858,000
7. The Big Bang Theory RPT EP2 (Nine) – 838,000
8. ABC News – 801,000
9. The Big Bang Theory RPT EP3 (Nine) 787,000
10. The Big Bang Theory RPT (Nine) – 766,000
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