The 2016 ARIA Awards, broadcast on Network TEN last night, generated an extra 125,000 viewers nationally over last year’s result, coming in as the overall 10th most watched show in Australia last night.
586,000 viewers watch the ARIA Awards with the biggest audience from Melbourne (228,000) compared to the 154,000 viewers in Sydney.
The ARIA broadcast was number 2 overall for 16-39 year olds, number 2 for 18-49 year olds and number 3 for 25-54 year olds.
The 2016 ARIA Awards was a considerably better show than the pop puff pieces from the two previous years.
The event gave a spotlight to metal band Violent Soho with their performance in prime television a rare thing indeed for a commercial network to allow.
The 2016 show included current controversial issues such as Sydney’s ridiculous lock-out laws rating a mention from Flume and the Australian government’s cruel marriage equality policy mentioned by Troye Sivan, Kylie Minogue and Angie Green on behalf of Sia.
For the first time in a long time the ARIA Awards televised show attempted to include musical diversity and political controversy in the broadcast. In doing so it presented a more unified music industry than in recent years.
Today, except the complaints about Flume who doesn’t sing or play an instrument winning most awards, the ‘Who The Fuck Are They’ comments about Violent Soho from the indie elite or they “if that the best we have” comments about Troye Sivan. Facebook threads are full of them this morning.
The ARIA Awards has and always will be a punching bag for sectors of the industry, including myself. If the ARIA Awards can achieve one thing, and that one thing is making people talk about the industry, then it is doing the right thing.
This year, it came a long way to bringing the business together.
