Final Leaders Debate Tops a Million

Last night’s 1 News Vote 17 Final Leaders Debate reached one million viewers, with more than 40% of viewers tuning in, TVNZ said today.

This eclipsed the 2014 election’s final debate, which reached 819,000 viewers and averaged 602,900.

Reach counts everyone who watched the programme for at least one minute.

It is the measure that captures the full scale of the audience as opposed to the average audience who watched every minute of the programme.

This year’s final debate reached 1.046 million viewers aged 5+ and averaged 643,000, to earn TVNZ 1 a channel share of 41.8%.

It reached 387,000 of TVNZ 1’s target demographic, 25-54 year-olds, and averaged 213,000, to gain a channel share of 34%.

TVNZ also reports “record levels” of online engagement for its election coverage, with 127,000 debate streams across 1 News Now, RE:, YouTube and Periscope.

The 430,000 who participated in 1 News’ interactive online Vote Compass  exceeded 2014’s tally by 100,000.

“The election appears to be on a bit of a knife-edge and it showed in last night’s intense debate,” John Gillespie, TVNZ’s Head of News and Current Affairs, says.

“We’ve seen a huge response as so many viewers turn to 1 News on all platforms. The interest isn’t abating and it feels like the election could be anyone’s.”