HD Ratings: Towies Gives TVNZ 1 a Lift

Recruiting Towies and The Force to anchor 7.30-8.30 Wednesdays gave TVNZ 1’s ratings a lift.

Towies averaged 8.7% of viewers 5+ last week and The Force 7.6% compared to Race Against the World’s 4.5% the previous Wednesday.

In the core commercial demographic that matters most to the network, 25-54 year-olds, it was a similar story.

Towies averaged 6.1% and The Force 5.1% vs 3.4% for Race; in the 18-49 demos, viewership of the former was twice as high as the latter.

The strategy was a win-win for TVNZ 1, as Race drew more 25-54 and 18-49 viewers at 8.30 than it did at 7.30.

One casualty of the new strategy was Three’s Bondi Rescue, which lost viewers in these key demos to both TVNZ 1’s revised line-up and TVNZ 2 adding another night of MKR: The Rivals.

The cooking challenge averaged 4.2% of the network’s 18-49 demo compared to 3.5% for the previous week’s 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown.

The same was true in the other core demos — but the upsurge, ironically, wasn’t enough to rescue lead-out Have You Been Paying Attention?.

Last week I predicted it would end its run on a ratings high.

But the combination of higher ratings for Race in its new slot and a resurgent 9-1-1 on Three saw it finish a distant third in the 18-49 and 25-54 demos.

TVNZ 1’s scheduling overhaul helped it to win the night in all the major demos.

Here are last Wednesday’s 20 most-watched primetime programmes on the free-to-air HD channels (excluding +1 and in order of their 5+ rating and audience share):