How did the strike impact ABC’s TV ratings?

Nathan Jolly

March 27, 2026 2:22

How did the strike impact ABC’s TV ratings?

It was a strike, but was it a ratings strike?

ABC staffers went on a 24-hour strike this week, from 11am on Wednesday. It wreaked havoc with the television schedule, but did it impact the TV ratings?

Well, an afternoon of Murdoch Mysteries and Long Lost Family reruns were never going to set Oztam’s daily ratings ablaze, but Wednesday evening saw the first big test, with BBC World News the only daily news bulletin, and the regular ABC 7pm bulletin replaced by a repeat of Australian Story.

It was fairly disastrous. The previous Wednesday saw 1.2m people tune into the ABC for the evening news, with an average audience of 936,00.

This Wednesday, just 641,000 tuned into watch the BBC World News, with an average viewing audience of 82,000.

That’s an average audience drop of more than 90%.

A repeat of an Australian Story episode (or to use their term – an “encore” presentation) fared rather well, with an average audience of 308,000 and total reach of 805,000. I guess if you haven’t seen it, it’s not a ~~repeat~~ encore presentation.

Tom Gleeson did a lot of heavy lifting on Wednesday evening, with two repeats of Hard Quiz, the usual 6.30pm rerun, and the Battle Of The Networks special at 7.30pm both pulling decent audiences, with averages of 297,000 (total: 560,000) and 347,000 (total: 581,000) respectively.

On Thursday, over 559,000 tuned into ABC Breakfast, only to be hit in the face with BBC World News yet again.

The prior Thursday drew an average of 250,000. This week, an average of 78,000 stuck around.

This is four thousand less than the previous evening’s BBC news — a neat window into the possible ABC/BBC retention rate should the monarch ever take a firmer hand in our public TV system.

By Thursday afternoon, normal services had resumed and ABC News and 730 were both back into the top ten of the daily ratings charts, drawing 1.17m apiece, with average audiences of 887,000 and 701,000 respectively.