Television

Steve Irwin's death dominates TV airwaves   Author: eNews staff and agencies | Sep 5, 2006, 10:13

Steve Irwin and family.

Steve Irwin's death certainly dominated the news.

The newspapers Tuesday are full of stories about him, with the usual cultural cringe about reaction overseas.

But it was on TV on Monday night that we saw quite a dramatic reaction.

Ratings for Nine News and Current Affair audiences jumped by around 400,000 to 500,000 compared to a normal Monday nigh for both programs.

ACA was the most watched program with 1.878 million; Nine News was next with 1.783 million.

Seven News was close behind with 1.712 million and Today Tonight also added around 200,000 on its normal Monday evening audience figures to average 1.605 million.

The ABC News at 7 pm added around 100,000 viewers while The 7.30 report bounced over the million viewer mark (up around 200,000 or so on normal Monday nights) to an average 1.009 million people.

Even the Ten News At Five saw its audience skyrocketed to the highest level for a long time: it averaged 1.295 million viewers for the hour from 5 pm.

Half a million people deserted Ten at 6 pm (The Simpsons averaged 733,000 at 6 pm), and went to Nine or Seven.

Tonight Seven is putting a tribute to Irwin to air at 8 pm after Border Security, beating the Nine Network by a day.

Nine told the media Monday night it would be showing an hour long special Wednesday night at 7.30 pm. It pulled a program which pitted Mother's In Law against each other in some strange contest.

The Irwin special will rate a lot better.

The big audiences for the News and ACA didn't help Nine one bit: its audience later in the night collapsed, Seven won.

Andrew Denton's Enough Rope which dropped an interview with raylene Boyle to run one with irwin from 2003 (along with an old interview with the late Don Chip) rated very well with 1.135 million people on average from 9.35 pm.

That was up around 200,000 or so on previous weeks.

What is also interesting is why the ABC didn't run the profile Australian Story did on Irwin and his family as well?

It should have: the reaction last night and today in the media, from radio talkback and TV shows, showed there would have been no reason not to have run both last night.

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