Last year, New Zealand’s Got Talent (NZGT) enjoyed an average viewership of 839,209 over the course of 13 weeks, but the follow-up season couldn’t even match that amount in the final episode, with only 726,900 viewers tuning in on Sunday night to see season-ending episode.
These results from Nielsen bring a disappointing end to the second season of TVNZ’s show, which was originally tipped for further success when it was announced.
According to Nielsen, last season’s finale drew in 939,000 viewers (excluding time-shifted viewing), which means that this year’s result is down almost 23 percent.
But the low ratings for the final episode weren’t anomalous. From its first episode, season two had a noticeable viewership dip from 2012 and this remained consistent throughout all 13 instalments of the show.
In September, after the first episode aired, TVNZ head of television Jeff Latch told StopPress that he “expected audiences to build as it [the show]continues,” but this hasn’t proven true, with numbers fluctuating from week to week while remaining well under the previous year’s statistics.
Despite the marked drop, Andrew Shaw, TVNZ’s GM of commissioning and production, still sees positives in the numbers.
“TVNZ is delighted that NZGT is once again the most-watched show of the year. In 2012 it was the highest-rating entertainment show in a decade. NZGT 2013 has proved a huge success, with larger audiences overall than other shows this year of a similar genre,” he says.
These sentiments were reiterated by a spokesperson from the TVNZ research team, who pointed out that the statistics were still the highest of any show for the year.
“NZGT is sitting at a 17.0 average rating including last night’s episode, which is an average episode audience of 700,000 viewers. This makes it the most watched show in 2013 alongside Dynamo which also averaged a 17.0 rating among AP5+”.
The research team also said that the viewership statistics would be consolidated with on-demand streaming via the TVNZ website and YouTube. Thus far, NZGT episodes have been streamed 435,489 via the website and 250,000 times via YouTube (both excluding the final episode).
Data for the on-demand streaming of the final episode is not yet available, because it is still in the process of being collected.
