New Bluey episode is barking up the right tree

The latest adventures of children’s TV favourite Bluey have reached a record-breaking audience of almost 1.5 million people in just a few hours.

The first episode of season three — Cubby, in which Bluey and sister Bingo build a very special home for their stuffed toy — premiered on Sunday and delivered a whopping overnight total audience of more than 1.49 million.

That made it the most-watched overnight premiere achieved by any Bluey episode since it began in 2018, according to OzTAM data.

The total audience breakdown includes 866,000 average audience (metro and regional) achieved by the morning premiere on TV, with another 149,000 watching the evening encore, and a further 483,000 catching up on iView online.

By comparison, the episode was more popular on the ABC than Sunday night’s detective drama Vera (611,000), ABC News (585,000) and Death in Paradise (572,000).

Cubby also set an ABC Kids broadcast channel record for the highest audience from any single broadcast, dating back to 2008 when OzTAM began measuring ratings.

ABC head of children’s content Libbie Doherty said the result showed biggest little show on Earth continued to prove a hit with Aussie families.

“It’s an incredible result and testament to the amazingly talented Joe Brumm and the team at Ludo. We are so grateful to all the kids, families, and audiences young and old who tuned in over Easter,” she said.

“Some of the copycat Cubbies popping up on social media would make Bluey and Bingo proud.”

New episodes of Bluey continue weekly on Sundays at 8am and 6.20pm on ABC Kids, and ABC iview until Sunday June 4.