MOTORSPORT: Bathurst in reverse on TV

Special motorsport report

The Bathurst 1000 telecast still dominates television on its day, but the audience is shrinking. While the Seven Network's screening of the Great Race still wins handsomely in all demographics, the key indicator – the average audience across the five mainland Australian capital cities – was down almost 13 per cent last Sunday from 2007, the year V8 Supercar (formerly touring car) racing returned to Seven.

The average number of viewers across those five capital cities during Sunday's telecast was 1.182 million.

That was 175,000 fewer viewers – or 12.89% less - than on the same measure in 2007 and 67,000 down on 2008. The drop from 2007, when the average audience was 1.357 million, to 2008, when it was 1.249 million, was 7.96%. And compared to last year's 1.249 million, last Sunday's stats were down another 5.36%.

The saving grace for Seven and V8 Supercars Australia is that the rate of decline has slowed, but the numbers are still heading south.

In a broader picture, what is called the national average (comprising regional audience numbers on top of viewers in the five capital cities) has shown a roughly similar trend, although the drop was sharper than on the narrower indicator (the five-capital average) in 2008 and smaller this year.

That national average fell by 221,000 viewers, or 10.24%, from 2.157 million in 2007 to 1.936 million in 2008. This year it fell another 72,000, or 3.72%, to 1.864 million.

The drop from 2007 to 2009 has been 293,000 viewers, or 13.58% -- so a worse percentage than the fall in the five capitals (12.89%).

Last Sunday's telecast peaked in the five capitals at 1.740 million, which Seven has called "astonishing".

Yet that peak was 230,000 viewers, or 11.67%, lower than Seven's 1.970 million in 2007. The drop in that five-capitals peak from last year, when it was 1.893 million, to this year was 153,000, or 8.08%. The drop from '07 to '08 was 77,000, or 3.90%.

All these figures are gleaned from, or calculated on, official OzTAM ratings data contained in Seven's press releases after the past three Bathurst 1000s.

Last Sunday's 1.740 million peak in the five capitals was more than half a million viewers short of the figure in 2006, which was the year of the last Bathurst telecast on the Ten Network and boosted by the "Brock factor" – the emotion in the wake of the death of the most legendary Bathurst driver, nine-time winner Peter Brock just weeks.

For the record, that 2006 five-capitals peak was 2.244 million viewers – 504,000, or almost 30%, more than last Sunday's 1.740 million.

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