Albanese’s address to Australia was a TV ratings smash

Nathan Jolly

April 2, 2026 3:57

Albanese’s address to Australia was a TV ratings smash

Albanese took over TV screens at 7pm Wednesday (Mumbrella)

The Prime Minister’s address to the nation on Wednesday evening was a television ratings success, a result that was almost assured considering it aired across all five free-to-air networks at the height of prime time.

The briefing, which ran for less than four minutes, started at 7pm. To compile the numbers, we’ve taken the average audience for the shows that ran during that timeslot across Nine, Seven, ABC, and Ten (SBS World News isn’t included, as it failed to make Oztam’s top thirty programs for the day), and added them together.

Using this metric, which must under-represent the true viewing audience (given SBS’s absence), 3.722 million Australians tuned into the address via free-to-air. Sky News, which doesn’t share its ratings, also screened the address.

To put the number in perspective, the biggest TV event of last year was the 2025 NRL grand final, which averaged 4.46m viewers.

A sizeable audience has also watched Albanese’s address on Youtube.

As of Thursday afternoon at 3pm, an additional 205,427 people had watched through ABC News’ channel, 75,277 on 7News, 64,562 on Nine, 47,788 on Ten News, and 17,296 via SBS. On top of this, Sky News’ Youtube channel drew 21,466 to the address, 7,231 came through The Guardian, 12,719 on The Australian’s channel — and 9,727 through Albanese’s own Youtube page.

This amounts to an extra 461,493 Youtube views, bringing the total audience to at least 4.183m.

Below are the full-day’s ratings, via Oztam.