HD Ratings: Friday Night Frights for TVNZ 2

TVNZ 2’s Friday night follies end tonight, with the final of The New Legends of Monkey and its Make You Laugh Out Loud season.

Next week it will screen Ellen’s Game of Games from 8.00 and re-run season nine of The Big Bang Theory from 8.50.

The current strategy has been an unmitigated disaster, with last week’s penultimate episode of Monkey averaging only 1.7% of the channel’s two key demographics, 18-49 and 18-39 year-olds, and 1.8% of household shoppers with kids.

Penguins Make You Laugh Out Loud averaged 1.6% of the age demos and 2.7% of HHS/k, and lead-out Heartbreak Island Uncut, 0.7% – 1.3%.

They were all thrashed by Three’s Graham Norton Show, 7 Days and newcomer The Spinoff TV.

Spinoff opened strongly off the back of 7 Days but viewership quickly declined over the half-hour, from 5.4% of Three’s core 25-54 audience to 2.3%, and from 5.7% of HHS/k to 1.2%.

It should have performed better given time slot-winning 7 Days’ 25-54 viewership rose from 7.6% to 8.1% and its HHS/k viewership from 8.4% to 8.7% (it peaked at 9.1%).

Three’s momentum started earlier in the evening, with the second half of its hour-long edition of The Project topping TVNZ 2’s 7.30 anchor, The Simpsons, in the 25-54 stakes and Norton averaging 3.4% – 8.4% of the core commercial demos to win the 8.00 hour outright.

TVNZ 1’s MasterChef Australia was competitive at 7.30, with a 25-54 average of 4.8%, and helped the season premiere of A Place to Call Home to average 3.4%, although there was a steep decline over the hour from 4.7% to 2.9%.

Coronation Street helped to reverse this at 9.45, with a time slot-winning 25-54 rating of 3.4%.