HD Ratings: The Coast With the Most

TVNZ 1 blitzed the competition last weekend with its new-look Sunday night schedule, which cut back Sunday to half-an-hour and launched season three of Coast NZ midway through TVNZ 2’s season two premiere of Survivor NZ.

But will the strategy hold up tonight when Three’s reboot of Dancing With the Stars kicks up its heels from 7.00-8.30?

In TVNZ 1’s target demographic of 25-54 year-olds, the network scored exceptional Sunday ratings, with 1 News at Six averaging 9.2%, Hyundai Country Calendar 9.9%, Sunday 9.7% and Coast NZ 7.9%.

Unusually, Coast NZ’s viewers grew across the hour, from 7.6% to 8.4%. And while lead-out Bancroft couldn’t sustain this for its series premiere, starting the UK thriller at 9.00 instead of the traditional 8.30 juncture helped to boost TVNZ 1’s viewership through to 10.00.

Unlike Coast NZ, however, Bancroft’s 25-54 audience more than halved, opening with 5.6% and closing with 2.6%. Nonetheless, it averaged 3.8%, which is what TVNZ would have expected had it aired from 8.30-9.30.

TVNZ 1’s line-up also scored most of the 18-49 eyeballs while Coast NZ won its slot among 18-39s as well.

Survivor NZ performed solidly in all the core commercial demos, with several segments out-rating HCC, Sunday and CNZ among 18-39s.

It averaged 5.8% of 25-54s, 4.9% of 18-49s, 5.1% of 18-39s and 5.9% of household shoppers with kids to finish ahead of Three’s movie, Minions, which averaged 3.1% – 4.1% of these demos.

Teaming Survivor with a re-run of Boy at 8.30 also was an inspired programming tactic, with the Taika Waititi hit averaging 3.2% – 4.5% of the key demos to beat Three’s The Internship (2.6% – 3.2%) in all but 18-39.

TVNZ 1’s new late-night drama, Seven Types of Ambiguity (1.0% -1.8%), out-rated TVNZ 2’s Time After Time but lost to the last hour of The Internship.

TVNZ 1’s new line-up helped it to score a rare, spectacular peak-hour win across all the core demos for the night, with shares of 26.5% – 30.6%.