Nine has finally ended its 18-plus months drought with its first ratings week victory, while its flagship program The Voice climbed to an astonishing 2.69 million viewers.
For the first time since September 2010, Nine has managed to cross the finish line in first place, having won week 16 of the 2012 official ratings season. Its senior management team is indebted to the success of The Voice, which delivered Nine 33.6% of audience share for the network and 27.4% of audience share for the main channel.
Last night's episode of The Voice built on its already impressive numbers to bring home 2.69 million metro viewers, according to preliminary overnight figures from OzTam. Last week, the show debuted to 2.17 million people on 16 April and averaged 2.36 million viewers across three nights. No program in recent memory has managed this kind of momentum.
On Friday, AdNews revealed the cost of a 30-second ad spot during the show was escalated to $100,000 due to its phenomenal ratings.
Nine's telemovie Beaconsfield, based on the drama of the mine disaster six years ago, also pulled in a solid 1.63 million viewers.
Unable to hold off The Voice assault, Seven's Dancing With The Stars dropped below a million viewers, down from its soft 1.07 million launch audience last week. Seven News was the highest ranked program on the network in fourth spot with 1.40 million viewers.
Similarly, The Biggest Loser struggled to gain momentum on Ten in the face of Nine's dominance, with 780,000 people tuned in, marginally up from 739,000 viewers last week. Modern Family had 754,000 viewers while new drama Touch drew in 742,000 viewers.
Ten's decision to broadcast the Formula 1 Grand Prix on its main channel, rather than on One, as part of its Super Sunday line-up attracted 425,000 motor racing fans.
Across the main channels on Sunday, Nine stormed home to take the top spot with 38.2% of audience share. Seven was second with 19.3%, followed by Ten with 13.1%, the ABC with 10.4% and SBS with 3.6%.
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