Mushroom 50 Wins Ratings, Proves Case For Music On TV

Mushroom 50, the marathon live music broadcast celebrating the success of Australia’s greatest music icon, the life of its founder Michael Gudinski, and Australian music more generally, was a ratings triumph last night, beating all competition and giving Seven a win for the night.

READ THE MUSIC’S REVIEW OF MUSHROOM 50

Rarely these days does a live music program get a prime time slot, but history shows that when the talent is right, the people will show up.

Last night 830,000 people tuned in to the broadcast across metro and regional markets, 557,000 in metro markets with an impressive ‘late’ portion of the program showing over 400,000 metro viewers long after TV usually farewells audiences to bed. Not only did Australian music fans show up to watch, but they stayed till the end.

The program easily beat 60 Minutes with 460,000 and Dessert Masters on 441,000, while post 8:30pm, the program crushed everything in its wake. The whole event is up now to stream on 7Plus, with catch-up and BVOD numbers meaning the event should see its overall audience top 1 million.

The success shouldn’t be a surprise to TV executives who saw Mushroom’s Music From The Home Front draw a large audience during COVID and TEG’s Fire Fight Australia smash ratings records in 2020.

Zan Rowe’s Take 5 has also been enjoying big audiences for the ABC, proving that high-quality music programming will find an audience.

Mushroom 50, broadcast live from Rod Laver Arena, brought together some of the finest talent in Australian music history, kicking off with Youth Group’s apt Forever Young and winding through artists like Jimmy Barnes, Yothu Yindi, Dan Sultan and Amy Shark.

The new class of Mushroom acts including Logan and WILSN had people googling their names all over Australia, showing that when the talent is right, Australians will embrace new artists. New music and heritage, Australians want it all.

The show closed with Ed Sheeran joining Hunters & Collectors for Throw Your Arms Around Me, Do You See What I See? and Holy Grail. Australians certainly threw their arms around Australian music.

Now over to you, network television. What’s the next ratings-winning music event that will get Australians up off their lounge chairs singing?

We’re ready….