HD Ratings: Fantasy Franchises Work Their Magic
January 24, 2018 
2 Comments
Movie franchises like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter remain free-to-air favourites ahead of TVNZ 2 launching its Indiana Jones season.
Sunday’s Rings finale, The Return of the King, averaged 5% of the country to win its three-and-a-half-hour slot and also dominated the demographic that matters most to TVNZ 1, 25-54 year-olds, with a 4.1% average.
It lost to Three’s House Rules (4.6%) but the latter’s popularity wasn’t enough to make lead-out A Good Day to Die Hard a winner.
The sequel averaged 3.2% and trailed King by more than a ratings point in each quarter-hour segment but pulled ahead of TVNZ 2’s Mr & Mrs Smith (2.3%).
Smith lead-in Miss Congeniality rated third with a 3.7% average but out-rated both King and Die Hard in the 18-49 (3.3%) and 18-39 (3.0%) demos.
House Rules was Three’s highest-rating show of the night, despite having the weakest 25-54 lead-in of The Big Three: 2.0% for Newshub Live vs 6.1% for 1 News and 2.9% for Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.
1 News and King helped TVNZ 1 to win the night in the four core commercial demos as well as viewers 5+.
On Friday, it was 2’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that scooped the core demos with averages of 3.3% – 6.4% to win every quarter-hour segment.
Even a new episode of Three’s Graham Norton Show proved defenceless, with a 25-54 average of 3.6% vs Prince’s 5.3%.
A re-run of Highway Cops and Amazing Spaces Shed of the Year on TVNZ 1 also beat Norton lead-in The Project in the 25-54 demo while at 6.00, 1 News drew four times as many 25-54 viewers as Newshub Live.
Thanks to Prince, TVNZ 2 comprehensively won the night in all the key demos.
On Saturday, 2’s Hotel Transylvania, Good Luck Chuck and America’s Sweethearts largely dominated the core demos, although 1’s The Casketeers won the 7.00 slot, with a 25-54 average of 3.1%, while Three’s Men in Black narrowly lost to Transylvania (2.4% vs 2.2%) — although the gap was wider in the other demos.
At 6.00, 1 News again had a commanding lead over Newshub Late, with nearly double the 25-54 viewership.
It helped 1 to match 2 in the 25-54 demo for the night but otherwise 2 was tops.
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January 24, 2018 at 10:00 am
TV3 last screened the Indiana Jones movies so are they swapping movies with TVNZ? I find it quite funny 🙂
Movies are licensed for so many runs as part of the studio deals the networks do. Often, when those rights have lapsed, the same movies are licensed to another network. This weekend, for instance, Three ran Men in Black, which previously was a TVNZ 2 staple. And as you say, the Indiana Jones franchise has had several runs on Three.