Ten's Sunday night lull expected to end with Game of Games

Josh McDonnell
By Josh McDonnell | 25 September 2018
 

Network Ten has continued to withhold primetime content from the popular Sunday night spot, as it gears up to launch new show Game of Games the week after the NRL Grand Final.

On Sunday night, the network for a second week broadcast a family film in the popular slot, failing to make the top 20 OzTam overnight programs list, while competitors Nine and Seven both ran tentpole offerings The Block and Sunday Night, respectively.

“Sunday is obviously a premium night for television and we acknowledge that for the past two Sundays Ten has not to competed as strongly as we should have at 7:30pm," Ten chief content officer Beverly McGarvey tells AdNews.

The Sunday primetime lull is expected to end on October 7 when Ten will start airing the first season of Game of Games, a local version of the gameshow made popular by Ellen in the US. As previously reported, it will be hosted by Grant Denyer.

“Don’t fear, we love Sunday nights," McGarvey continues, "In two weeks Sunday night family entertainment is back with a show that has no renovation, cooking or dating in sight. We are not mad enough to launch Game of Games against the NRL Grand Final, but on October 7, Grant Denyer returns to host this smash entertainment game show."

Nine this week charged ahead yet again with its Sunday night ratings dominance, with The Block once again drawing more than a million views, with an overnight total of 1.26m, while Seven's Sunday night drew in 696,000, followed by The Story of The Royals which had 493,000 viewers.

In the overnight main channel battle for Sunday, Ten's main channel share plummeted to 5.8%, while Nine and Seven drew in 26.5% and 19.6% respectively.

The ABC came in third with 12.8%, with Ten narrowly escaping last place, beating SBS, which had a main channel share of only 1.3%.

“Last week we doubled down on making sure Survivor, HYBPA and The Bachelor Australia continue to have their biggest seasons ever, that Gogglebox continues to be a tentpole on Thursdays and that The Sunday Project," McGarvey added. 

The same story occurred last week when Ten ran the 2016 film Now You See Me 2, which had just over 282,000 viewers in the primetime slot for Sunday. The broadcaster also found itself in fourth place behind the ABC in the overnight main channel race, with a share of 7.5%.

Ten states it is confident in the line-up of programming it has on the horizon, including Blind Date, The Bachelorette, Ambulance Australia and The Secret Life of Four Year Olds.

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