Despite the reappearance of Fatty and Eddie’s Footy Shows, the Friday night Rugby League game in Sydney and Brisbane and the AFL Wizard Cup final on Saturday night in Melbourne and elsewhere, the Nine Network has gone down narrowly to rival Seven in a week of ratings the network had high expectations of winning. That makes three wins for Seven, a tie (disputed by Nine which claims a win by 1,000 viewers!) and one clear win to Nine in the first five weeks of official ratings.

The bottom line last week was that as well as Nine did on Friday and Saturday nights with the football, the extra ratings share was not big enough to make up for those bad losses on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights. When Seven finally finesses its way to a better Sunday night line-up and closes the gap on that night’s battle, then Nine will be facing even more pressure.

Read Glenn Dyer’s full analysis of last week’s ratings battles on the site: Football fails to save Nine from another loss