Blankety Blank Guns Down Gower

Wednesday’s season premiere of Blankety Blank won TVNZ 1 the 7.30 hour in the key demo after losing to both TVNZ 2 and Three the previous week.

The game show averaged 3.45% of 25-54 year-olds vs 2.94% for the previous week’s The Celebrity Chase.

That delivered a 21.27 share of the demo or 70,879 adults — 10,000 more than Chase.

It was a blow for week two of Three’s Paddy Gower Has Issues, which saw its viewership decline from the premiere’s 3.27 rating/18.10 share (67,047 viewers) to a 2.50 rating/15.74 share (51,404).

TVNZ 2’s MasterChef Australia also shed viewers, dropping week-on-week from a 4.03 rating/24.20 share (82,757) to a 3.66 rating/23.71 share (73,132).

Issues lead-out Couples Therapy finished third at 8.30, with a 1.53 rating/10.08 share, after TVNZ 2’s Taskmaster (2.94 rating/18.87 share) and TVNZ 1’s season premiere of Race Across the World (1.96 rating/12.92 share).

Race was down sharply on the previous week’s Location Location Location (2.66 rating/20.73 share) while both Taskmaster and Therapy improved.

Three’s live State of Origin coverage from 10pm averaged a 2.07 rating/26.25 share to easily beat Coronation Street and Send Nudes: Body SOS.

The most watched shows of the night in the 25-54 demo were: 1 News, The Chase (5.30), Shortland Street, Seven Sharp, MasterChef Australia, Blankety Blank, Newshub Live at 6pm, The Project, Taskmaster and The Chase (5.00).

The biggest free-to-air channel shares were: TVNZ 1, 25.23;  TVNZ 2, 17.28; Three, 16.66; Bravo, 6.06; Duke, 4.03; Rush, 2.75; HGTV, 2.22; Eden, 2.17; Prime, 2.09.