Nine's launch of The Block is off to a strong start with a larger audience than last season's opener as Ten's second season of Australian Survivor sheds viewers.
Seven's Sunday Night special on Prince Harry and William opening up about Princess Diana usurped both with a massive metro audience of 1.33 million viewers. The show skewed older in advertising demos with more than two-thirds of the audience aged 50 years and above.
The Block attracted an average metro audience of 1.12 million, which is 4% more than last year, and it easily won all key advertising demos. The national average audience was 1.62 million and it peaked at 1.93 million.
Australian Survivor, which ran against the Block in the 7.30pm time slot, drew an audience of 639,000 metro viewers, down 18% on last year. It came second in the 16-39s demo, but, fourth in the 18-49s and dropped out of the top five in 25-54s, which indicates the show attracts a younger audience.
It fared well on social media and was the most tweeted Australian entertainment show last night.
The Block offers Nine stability in the back-end of the ratings year and was a primary reason the network making a strong comeback in the second half of 2016.
This season is the first time contestants are working on individual houses, albeit bungalow-sized weatherboard dwellings, the type your nan used to live in, that had a date with a wrecking ball.
There's also a couple who go by the names 'Sticks' and 'Wombat'.
Nine's recent three week block of Australian Ninja Warrior has dominated the past three weeks, and the network will be hoping of more of the same from one of it's most reliable TV properties.
Weekly ratings wrap
Nine's broadcast of Austrlaina Ninja Warrior Final Stage, followed by its Grand Final were the most watched prime time shows of the ratings week, with city metro audiences of 2.13 million and 2.05 million respectively.
They were followed by the channel's Sunday episode of Ninja with 1.74 million city metro viewers, with the Monday episode following closely behind with 1.54 million city metro viewers.
Ten's MasterChef finale came in fifth with an average city audience of 1.3 million.
In prime time, Nine attracted the highest audience for the week in terms of channel share, with 41.1% of the share, followed by Seven with a 34.1% and Ten with 24.9% of audience. It also won the week across all demos.
Check out the full weekly ratings wrap here, as supplied by Nine:
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.