HDTV Ratings: January 16

Last night’s HD premiere of Person of Interest proved interesting enough to win the 9.30pm hour with TV One’s target audience, 25-54 year-olds.

But TV3’s HD repeat of 2 Fast 2 Furious easily overtook it in the 18-49 and 18-39 demos.

Person of Interest

Last night also was notable for the return of Shortland Street, Piha Rescue, Rapid Response and Criminal Minds in HD.

The season-seven premiere of Criminal Minds rated 11.9% of 25-54s and 10.4% of 18-49s, winning the 8.30pm hour opposite 2 Fast 2 Furious.

Lead-out Person of Interest made a strong if unspectacular debut.

It averaged 8.7% of 25-54s and 7.3% of 18-49s but was down nearly six points from Criminal Minds with household shoppers with kids: 8.6% versus 14.5% (most of the audience was cannibalised by the second half of Over Her Dead Body, the movie on TV One’s sister channel, TV2,).

Over two hours 2 Fast 2 Furious averaged 7% of 25-54s (versus Body’s 7.4%), 8.2% of 18-49s (vs 7.9%), and 9.5% of 18-39s (vs 8.8%).

Earlier in the evening, Shortland Street roared back with 18.5% of 18-39s and 22.5% of HHS/kids, or roughly four times the viewership of TV3’s Modern Family re-run.

Piha Rescue averaged 10.6% of 25-54s, compared to 9.0% for TV3’s HD re-run of Drug Bust, and Rapid Response, 12.2% (vs Kalgoorlie Cops’ 7.2%).

TV One was the first of the networks to launch its 2012 slate – the others won’t roll out their new-season big guns until February.

The new look coincided with the introduction of a more sophisticated ratings system that, for the first time, will measure time-shifted viewing via PVRs.

With PVR penetration in NZ about 28%, the overhaul is long overdue and could be a boon for drama in primetime, as overseas markets show this is the genre that is most often recorded, and therefore doesn’t rate as well as other genres in overnight ratings.

AGB Nielsen Research’s new UniTAM system also increases the number of Peoplemeter households by 20%, to 600, and can measure viewing on other devices, too.