Unfortunate lookalike of the day.

Live News had the story: “Man fired from children’s hospital after s-x with vacuum cleaner”. And the pic … strangely reminiscent of Morris Iemma’s predecessor. ( The Sun, as ever, had the best angle on the story)

The Winners: Seven had the top four starting with Border Security (1.636 million), followed by its 8pm stablemate The Force with 1.524 million. Seven News was next with 1.480 million and Today Tonight was 4th with 1.463 million. Ten’s So You Think You Can Dance Australia was next with 1.395 million, followed by Home And Away (1.367 million), CSI (1.350 million), Desperate Housewives (1.302 million), Nine News (1.291 million), A Current Affair (1.158 million), CSI New York (1.111 million), The Biggest Loser (1.100 million), Good News Week (1.075 million) and the 7pm ABC News (1.041 million). Seven’s Dirty Sexy Money managed 959,000 at 9.30pm. Mythbusters, 518,000.

The Losers: Two And A Half Men at 7pm, 944,000, and a Year With The Royal Family at 7.30pm, 959,000. Not good enough for Nine. Supernatural on Ten at 9.30pm, 763,000. Spooky!

News & CA: Seven News and Today Tonight both won nationally and in every metro market. Ten News averaged 828,000; the Late News/Sports Tonight, 415,000. Nightline, 210,000. The 7.30 Report, 737,000 (Kevin Rudd isn’t the attraction he was after the election); Lateline, 333,000; Lateline Business, 174,000. SBS News, 159,000 at 6.30pm; 134,000 at 9.30pm. 7am Sunrise down to 384,000; 7am Today down to 277,000, but the gap is down a touch.

The Stats: Seven won with a share of 30.5% from 6pm to midnight (29.9% a week ago) from Nine with 25.5% (25.7%), Ten with 23.2% (23.1%), the ABC with 14.8% (14.8%) and SBS on 6.1% (6.4%). Seven won all five metro markets. Nine leads the week 30.2% to 27.7%. In regional areas Prime/7Qld won with 30.1% from WIN/NBN with 26.5%, Southern Cross (Ten) with 19.2%, the ABC with 16.7% and SBS with 7.0%. In the 6pm to 10.30pm battle, Fusion Strategy said that in the metro markets, Seven had a share of 26.65% (26.75% a year ago on the same night) from Nine with 22.47% (23.0%), Ten with 20% (17.58%), the ABC with 12.91% (13.18%) Pay TV with 12.81% (14.26%) and SBS 5.05% (5.54%). Pay TV’s Monday night audiences will get a boost when the NRL games start later this month. That will confirm sport attracts the biggest audiences on Pay.

Glenn Dyer’s comments: Nine needs just two successful programs to make Monday nights a real contest: something at 7pm to rate around 1.1 million and a regular at 7.30pm to get around 1.2 million to 1.3 million. Any ideas? And they need to give the News and A Current Affair a rocket: they are the programs dragging down Nine’s effort most nights. Ten continues to be solid and has had its best start to a year for a while. Australian Story was solid last night with the Charlie Waterstreet story, but how about some characters from Brisbane or Melbourne… there must be some. Four Corners returned to Queensland 20 years after Joh and reaped the benefit with viewers. Tonight it’s It Takes Two and All Saints for those of us who don’t want to watch two teams of spoiled men called throwing handbags at each other.

Source: OzTAM, TV Networks, Fusion Strategy reports