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Has The X Factor lost its "X-factor"?
Last night's "winner announcement" segment drew 1 million fewer viewers than last year's announcement – its worst winner result ratings since the talent show switched from Channel Ten to Seven.
Almost 1.43 million metropolitan viewers watched schoolgirl Marlisa Punzalan take the crown – compared to the 2.43 million who saw Dami Im win in 2013.
The remainder of the grand final episode had an audience of 1.38 million. (Commercial networks now regularly split reality show finales in two for ratings purposes, to take advantage of the peak in viewership when winners are revealed.)
Despite the slump, the two X Factor segments were Monday's top-rating programs, giving Seven a whopping 34.5 per cent slice of the audience – well ahead of Nine's 24.4 per cent share, ABC's 20 per cent, Ten's 17.7 per cent and SBS's 3.3 per cent.
"The [X Factor] grand final was a superb production, with a worthy winner, and it was the most watched show on TV last night by a long way," a Seven spokesman said.
Ten, meanwhile, enjoyed another Bachelor-fuelled ratings bump for The Project.
The second half of the news-based show, airing at 7pm, soared to eighth place with more than 1 million viewers – an excellent result given The Project sometimes draws an audience half that size.
But Ten's new drama-comedy Party Tricks fared poorly, attracting just 407,000 viewers. If the network had considered this series as a possible replacement for the popular Offspring, which remains in limbo, it may be re-thinking that plan this morning.
Ten's Family Feud was last night's top-rating game show (592,000), beating both Seven's Million Dollar Minute (535,000) and Nine's Hot Seat (532,000) – though it does not compete directly with either show.
Tracy Grimshaw gained a narrow win of 5000 viewers over Alf Stewart, with Nine's A Current Affair (907,000) beating Seven's Home and Away (902,000). Yet neither was a match for the ongoing Bachelor saga, which helped The Project claim a rare timeslot victory.
ABC's top show was Australian Story with 901,000 viewers, followed by Four Corners with an audience of 840,000.
The politician-free episode of Q&A was watched by 595,000.
Nine's sitcom The Big Bang Theory remains popular: a fresh episode took third place with 1.13 million, while a repeat managed to crack the top 10, claiming seventh spot with 1.01 million.
Nine also had the most-watched news service with a metropolitan audience of 1.06 million for the first half of its one-hour bulletin.
Most watched shows on Monday
1. The X Factor Winner Announcement (Seven) - 1.428 million
2. The X Factor Grand Final (Seven) - 1.378 million
3. The Big Bang Theory (Nine) - 1.127 million
4. Nine News (Nine) - 1.064 million
5. Seven News (Seven) - 1.045 million
6. Seven News/Today Tonight (Seven) - 1.029 million
7. The Big Bang Theory, rpt (Nine) - 1.012 million
8. The Project 7pm (Ten) - 1.002 million
9. Nine News 6.30pm (Nine) - 943,000
10. A Current Affair (Nine) - 907,000
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20. Big Brother (Nine) - 653,000
*Source OzTAM
