HD Ratings: Will Booze Be the Tonic Three Needs?

Three’s decision to screen Gower On: Booze and Newshub Talks: Booze 24 hours apart rather than back-to-back signals how urgently it needs to overhaul Wednesdays.

Traditionally documentaries about social issues have been double-billed with panel debates on the same night.

But Three’s strategy to screen Gower on June 14 and Newshub Talks on June 15 looks like a bid to milk the popularity of Gower’s specials across two nights.

Wednesday is Three’s lowest-rating weeknight, with series like Parental Guidance, SAS Australia and Finding Escobar’s Millions all failing to fire.

Last night’s PG final averaged just 1.0% of Three’s 25-54 target audience opposite TVNZ 2’s time-slot winning Snack Masters (4.2%) and TVNZ 1’s re-run of The Chase: Bloopers (3.5%).

At 8.30, SAS averaged 1.0% against TVNZ 1’s top-rating Kirstie & Phil’s Love It Or List It (3.3%) and TVNZ 2’s Taskmaster (2.3%).

And an hour later, Escobar averaged just 0.3% opposite Coronation Street’s unbeatable 1.3% and Tom Allen’s Quizness’ 0.7%.

It was a similar whitewash in the next most important commercial demographic, 18-49.

As a result, TVNZ 1 won the night with massive shares — 32.5% of 25-54s, 32.7% of 18-49s — while Three finished a distant third with respective shares of 11.8% and 12.5%.

No wonder the programmers are turning to drink …

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