The Block Sky High's 88 rooms demo'd and reno'd no reason to tune out
Despite only 52 days between The Block Allstars finale and The Block Sky High premiere, the Channel 9 audience indicated they still wanted renovation stress television shows.
The latest series rated as the third highest show, excluding news, when it aired last night to a metropolitian audience of 1.312 million.
It was up against Sunday Night on Channel 7 which had a 1.238 million audience in the Sunday night 6.30 slot.
The opening night of The Block All Stars premiered in February this year had just 959,000 viewers tuning in, well down on previous seasons, but it was up against the My Kitchen Rules jugganaut.
Last year the first-night Channel 9 ratings for The Block series set in South Melbourne with four adjoining Dorcas Street terraces rated an average 1.4 million viewers, which bettered 2011’s 1,342,000 debut viewers of the Richmond cottage renovation.
The twitter account started off with 22,450 followers. There were 40 plus tweets during the opening hour as the contestants started on their 88 room renovation of a former motel in South Melbourne.
This season returns to South Melbourne with the Melbourne audience naturally outnumbering the Sydney audience, according to the OzTAM five city metropolitian report. Melbourne's audience was 465,000 last night, Sydney had 390,000 and Brisbane was 261,000, Adelaide was 101,000 and Perth at 94,000.
The first Block season was filmed in Bondi in 2003, with 2.2 million watching weekly – and the auction finale episode attracted 3.1 million viewers, which was the second-most watched event of 2003.
Its 2003 first series coincided with the peak of the property boom along the east coast Sydney property market.
The first series was hosted by Jamie Durie, and the past few by Scott Cam.
The Block Sky High will go head to head against the Channel 7 series, House Rules mid-week.
