HD Ratings: Masked Singer Falls Flat

Three’s Sunday night season premiere of The Masked Singer NZ didn’t scale the heights of MasterChef NZ’s swansong in the same slot the previous week.

It averaged less than half the 25-54 viewership of TVNZ 1’s Sunday — 2.5% vs 5.2% — but out-rated TVNZ 2’s MasterChef Australia (2.0%).

In the 18-49 demographic, the Georgina Beyer reveal averaged 1.9% vs Sunday’s 3.4% and MasterChef’s 1.7%.

While not top of the charts, the viewership was in line with MasterChef NZ’s run (apart from the season finale’s 3.2%/2.1% averages).

Otherwise, TVNZ 1 had a tight lock on the night with The Chase, 1 News at 6pm, Hyundai Country Calendar and George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces winning their slots.

Three’s Newshub Investigates: Generation Covid averaged just 1.8% of 25-54s and 1.5% of 18-49s but still finished ahead of TVNZ 2’s movie War of the Worlds (1.1%/0.8%).

On the smaller HD channels, Eden’s free-to-air premiere of The Current War averaged 0.2%/0.1% vs 0.1%/0.1% for Whakaata Māori’s FTA debut of Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

Duke’s Along for the Ride with David O’Doherty averaged 0.3%/0.4%, Prime’s season finale of The Cleaning Lady 0.4%/0.3% and its HBO docu The Janes 0.0%/0.0%.

TVNZ 1 easily had the night’s biggest key demo shares while Three led TVNZ 2 by a wide gap.

TVNZ 1 also dominated Saturday with its game shows and lifestyle line-up but on Friday perennial favourite The Repair Shop suffered a rare loss at 7.30 to TVNZ 2’s Britain’s Got Talent.

The semi-finals episode averaged 3.1% of 25-54s and 2.5% of 18-49s and helped lead-out Laughs Unleashed to win its slot with averages of 2.0%/1.6%.

Note: These overnight ratings exclude viewership of the networks’ +1 SD channels.