The celebration of the life of Olivia Newton-John continued over the weekend, with both Channel 7 and Channel 9 airing specials related to the late Aussie superstar.
Channel 7’s “7News Spotlight: Olivia – A Magical Life” aimed to “pay tribute to the extraordinary life force of Dame Olivia Newton-John” with the Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb, UK music veteran Cliff Richard and popstar Delta Goodrem all sharing their memories.
It also featured a musical tribute from Wendy Matthews, Dami Im, Katie Noonan and Samantha Jade, who performed “I Honestly Love You”.
The special had a metro audience of 398,000 and was most popular in Melbourne (149,000). With the addition of regional viewers, the show had 592,000. There was an online audience of 28,000.
Channel 9’s “A Celebration of Olivia Newton-John”, meanwhile had a metro audience of 336,000. It was also most popular in Melbourne (110,000).
Earlier in the evening, Channel 9 also featured a story on the star on its flagship news and current affairs program, “60 Minutes”. The report by Liz Hayes featured an interview with Newton-John and her daughter Chloe Lattanzi in southern California.
The average metro audience for “60 Minutes” on Sunday night was 527,000. With 231,000 regional viewers and 44,000 tuning in online, its total was 802,000.
Overall in television, the most popular Sunday night program was Channel 9’s “The Block”, with 984,000 metro viewers, 383,000 in the regions and 141,000 online, taking its total to 1.508 million.
“MKR” on Channel 7 had biggest audience so far in 2022, according to the network. It had 500,000 in the metro markets and 227,000 regionally. With the addition of the 50,000 viewers on 7Plus, its total was 827,000.
“The Masked Singer” on Channel 10, meanwhile, had 549,000 metro viewers for the ‘reveal’ segment, and 437,000 for the earlier parts of the episode. The main episode had a national audience of 607,000, while the reveal climbed to 779,000.
Network 10 did not release its streaming figures.
The episode saw former “Backyard Blitz” host Jamie Durie unmasked as the ‘Tiger’.
After his unmasking, he said: “It was so much fun. There is a little bit of Tiger still left in me.”