HD Ratings: Coro St Shoots to the Top
June 20, 2018 
3 Comments
TVNZ’s decision to leap-frog 18 months of Coronation Street and relaunch it with a weeknight strip has paid off in the ratings.
Last week’s 9.30 Monday-Friday episodes often won their time slots in key demographics and out-rated the shows they replaced earlier in the week.
As of tonight, Coro St reverts to a Wednesday-Friday schedule with hour-long instalments that are only a week behind the UK broadcasts.
Last Monday’s episode averaged 3.1% of TVNZ 1’s target audience, 25-54 year-olds, and 2.5% of 18-49s, to beat TVNZ 2’s Grey’s Anatomy (2.0%/2.2%) and rival Three’s Serial Killer With Piers Morgan (4.0%/2.7%).
The previous week, TVNZ 1’s Lucifer finished third in the same slot, with 1.4% of 25-54s and 0.7% of 18-49s.
Tuesday’s episode won its hour, with 3.2% of 25-54s and 2.7% of 18-49s, compared to 2.4%/2.2% for Grey’s and 2.7%/1.7% for Three’s SVU.
The previous Tuesday, 20/20 averaged 1.8% of 25-54s and 1.4% of 18-49s.
Last Wednesday’s episode also won its slot, with 2.8% of 25-54s and 2.4% of 18-49s, which was up sharply on the previous week’s 2.1%/1.7%.
Thursday’s episode rated higher with 25-54s — 3.4% — and pulled more viewers than the previous week’s in both the 25-54 and 18-49 demos but lost to Three’s X-Men.
While Friday’s episode was the lowest rating — 2.2% of 25-54s and 2.0% of 18-49s — it out-gunned 2’s Heartbreak Island Uncut (1.9%/1.7%) and was up on the previous week’s 1.9%/1.4%.
Even so, it still lost to Three’s 7 Days (7.1%/6.1%) and the first half of Funny Girls (3.5%/2.8%).
The publicity surrounding TVNZ 1’s courageous programming and the unusually over-the-top culmination of a key storyline would have buoyed interest in the soap.
But the higher ratings also show what TVNZ 1 might have achieved earlier had it made a concerted effort to catch up with more strategic scheduling, such as stripping Coro St five nights a week over the past few summers or screening more 90-minutre instalments instead of littering primetime with the diminishing returns of endless re-runs of Mrs Brown’s Boys.
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June 26, 2018 at 10:01 pm
Already the scheduling has gone haywire. Half-hour episode tonight (Tues) and Thursday, hours on Wednesday and Friday. Presumably down to lengthy MasterChef episodes? It’s the same number of episodes but IMHO Not good to be mucking around with the scheduling so early into the ‘revival’.
Couldn’t agree more, Clint. But at least TVNZ 1 is maintaining the same number of half-hour episodes within a week, which reflects its renewed commitment to Coro. It’s adopting a similar strategy for the week starting July 7, with Tuesday and Friday half-hours, and Wednesday and Thursday hour-long eps. And, yes, it’s because of the variable length of MasterChef Oz: the July 13 broadcast will run from 7.30-9.10.
True. There would have been hell to pay if they only aired 5 episodes per week. Interesting that last night was seemingly at the expense of showing the Tonight bulletin.