HD Ratings: Big Bang Bigger Than Star Wars

One of Hollywood’s biggest sci-fi franchises can’t top one of TV’s longest-running and most popular sitcoms.

As TVNZ 2’s The Big Bang Theory builds towards Sheldon and Amy’s Star Wars-themed wedding on May 30, it continues to out-rate Three’s Star Wars season.

Three relaunched the Luke Skywalker saga after American Idol fell flat, no doubt hoping interest in the latest sequel, Solo: A Star Wars Story, which opens next week in cinemas, would help to spur interest in the vintage warhorse.

A New Hope, which screened on May 2, averaged a respectable 4.0% of 25-54 year-olds, the audience that Three targets with its programming, and was up nearly a rating point on the previous week’s Idol.

It was more popular than TVNZ 1’s line-up in this demographic but distantly trailed TVNZ 2’s My Kitchen Rules (6.0%), TBBT (5.1%) and Mom (4.5%). (In its first 75 minutes, opposite MKR, Hope averaged 4.5%.)

The pattern was the same in the 18-49 and 18-39 demos, but the movie lost to TVNZ 1’s Location Location Location and Doctor Doctor among household shoppers with kids.

The Empire Strikes Back averaged 2.9% of 25-54s but suffered a much lower lead-in: May 2’s The Project averaged an unusually high 5.7% of this demo whereas last week’s Project averaged only 3.2%.

Both MKR and TBBT rated higher week-on-week: the former averaged 7.2% and the latter, 5.8%; Mom also improved to 5.1%.

Expect this trend to continue, as MKR and TBBT head toward their season finales.

The TBBT wedding episode lifted the #1 US comedy’s ratings and last week “made it the night’s top telecast by far,” reports The Hollywood Reporter while Deadline says the season 11 finale, which guest stars Star Wars’ Mark Hamill, scored a three-month high.

Meanwhile, in a battle of comic book franchises on Sunday night, Three’s network premiere of Deadpool walloped TVNZ 2’s rerun of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Deadpool averaged 5.0% of 25-54s (vs America’s 3.0%), 4.9% of 18-49s (vs 2.9%), 3.6% of 18-39s (vs 2.9%) and 5.8% of HHS/k (vs 4.7%).

This weekend TVNZ 2 will premiere Captain America: Civil War opposite Three’s premiere of the most recent James Bond adventure, Spectre.