Packed to the Rafters leads Seven to victory

All the winners and losers from last night's TV ratings, plus the week that was, the week ahead, who's watching what out bush, and the Pay TV battlefront...

The Winners:

MasterChef — 1.764 million viewers (Ten)
Seven News — 1.603 million (Seven)
Nine News — 1.400 million (Nine)
Dancing With The Stars — 1.325 million from (Seven)
RBT — 1.263 million (Nine)
The Good Wife — 1.172 million (Ten)
Send In The Dogs — 1.121 million (Nine)

MasterChef at last had a decent domestic test, and good to see the judges stunned by the winner of the invention test. No one thought of pickled rhubarb. The Ray Martin report on 60 Minutes on Breaker Morant did very nicely detail that wonderful British invention in the Boer War, the concentration camp.

The Losers: Nothing really, except for CSI which averaged 824,000, but didn’t air in Perth (nor did Cold Case).

News & CA:

Seven News again won nationally, but Nine News had more viewers in Sydney and Adelaide.

Seven News — 1,603,000
Nine News — 1,400,000
ABC News — 878,000
Ten News — 659,000,
SBS News at 6.30pm — 154,000

In the mornings:

Weekend Sunrise –416,000 (Seven)
Weekend Today — 236,000 (Nine)
Insiders — 233,000 (ABC)
Inside Business — 184,000 (ABC)
Offsiders — 202,000 (ABC)
Meet The Press — 66,000 (Ten)
Landline — 265,000 (ABC)

The Stats:

Free To Air: Seven won All People with a share of 29.9%, from Nine on 28.1%, Ten with 23.4%, the ABC, 13.8% and SBS, 4.9%. Thanks to MasterChef, the finale of The Good Wife and House, Ten won the 16 to 39, 18 to 49 and 25 to 54 demos last night.
Main Channel: Seven won here with a share of 24.4%, from Nine with 22.7%, Ten on 21.6%, ABC 1 on 12.8% and SBS ONE with 4.4%.
Digital: 7TWO won with a solid 5.6%, from GO on 5.3%, ONE with 1.8%, ABC 2 on 0.6%, SBS TWO, 0.5% and ABC 3, 0.4%. The six FTA digital channels had a total share of a high 14.2%. The audiences for 7TWO and GO were higher than SBS’s combined overnight share of 4.9%. In Adelaide the digital channels had a total share of 15.8%, in Perth it was 14.2%. It was one of the strongest nights for the digital channels since they started last year.
Pay TV: Seven won with a share of 25.1%, from Nine with 23.5%, Ten on 19.6%, Pay TV, 13/8%, the ABC, 11.6% and SBS, 4.1%. Both 7TWO, (with 4.7%) and GO, (with 4.5%) had a bigger share than SBS’s combined overnight share. The 11 FTA channels had a total share of 86.2%, Pay TV’s 100 plus channels shared in the 13.8% share reported. The digital channels averaged 11.9% with Pay TV included.
Regional: A win to WIN/NBN with a share of 31.7% from Prime/7Qld with 27.5%, SC Ten with 21.0%, the ABC with 14.2% and SBS on 5.7%. WIN/NBN won the main channels with 25.0%, from Prime/7Qld with 11.6%. GO won the digitals with a high 6.6% (beat SBS), from 7TWO with 4.9%. The six FTA digital channels had a total share of 14.2% in regional areas, which is very high against recent levels.

Across the cities — who fared best where:

Sydney: Nine won from Seven and Ten. Nine won the main channels, 7TWO won the digitals. MasterChef was the most watched program from Nine News.
Melbourne: A win for Seven here overall and for the main channels and the digitals with 7TWO. MasterChef was the most watched program, from Seven News.
Brisbane: Nine won the combined overnight, Seven won the main channels, and GO won the digitals. Seven News was the top program, from MasterChef.
Adelaide: Nine won overall and the main channels, 7TWO won the digital. MasterChef was the most watched program, followed by Nine News.
Perth: Seven won both the overall and the main channels (Ten was second and Nine third). GO won the digitals. Seven News was tops, from MasterChef.

(All shares on the basis of combined overnight 6pm to midnight All People).

Who won the week? Packed to the Rafters makes it a winning week for Seven, with Nine coming close behind. In the main channels Seven won all five metro markets in one of its better performances in recent months, thanks mostly to the strong return of Packed to the Rafters on Tuesday night. Seven won Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights. Nine won Sunday, Monday and Thursday.

Seven won the week in All People with a share of 28.0%, from Nine with 25.8% and Ten with 22.4%. Seven won the main channels with a share of 24.9%, from Nine with 22.3% and Ten on 21.1%. GO won the digitals for the week with 3.5%, from 7TWO on 3.1% and ABC 2 with 1.8%.Seven won Friday and Saturday nights in All people. Seven won Friday night in the main channels, the ABC won Saturday night. 7TWO won the digitals on Friday and Saturday nights. Seven won Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Nine won Adelaide in All People.

Pay TV battlefront: Seven won the week with 23.3%, from Nine with 21.5%, Ten on 18.6%, the ABC with 15.0% and Pay TV with 14.3% and SBS with 4.8%. The 11 FTA channels had a total share of 85.7% for the week, Pay TV’s 100 plus channels, 14.3%. On Saturday night pay TV had a share of 18.2%, topping Ten with 13.3% and Nine on 18.1%.

Out bush: Regionally, WIN/NBN won from Primer/7Qld and SC Ten. WIN/NBN won the main channels, GO won the digitals.

The week in news: In the News and Current Affairs battle, Nine News won Sydney and Melbourne and Seven News and Today Tonight won nationally. A Current Affair won Melbourne last week, TT won the rest.

The shows that nobody loves: Of the 1278 programs measured on FTA TV last week, only nine registered no viewers at all. Here they are:

Station close (ABC 3)
Polish News (SBS 2)
WeatherWatch & Music (SBS 2)
Message Stick (ABC 2)
Hong Kong News (SBS 2)
Room for Improvement (Seven)
Fire Over Africa (Nine)
Indonesian News (SBS 2)
Chinese News (SBS 2)

The death of Nightline: Nine’s News and Current Affairs have now killed two news/entertainment programs in a year, with the unlamented This Afternoon, a year ago this month. A late News was introduced back into Nine’s schedule in May of last year, after it had been axed by previous management. The late news was rebranded as Nightline last November, so strictly speaking, Nightline lasted just seven months.

In comments justifying his Nightline decision, Nine Network’s director of News and Current Affairs Mark Calvert said that the main points of competition with Seven were in breakfast and at 6pm and 6.30pm news and current affairs shows. That was the case in May of last year; it hasn’t changed, so why spend money on Nightline? A Nine spokesperson said Nightline was moved around the schedule but hadn’t found its place. It was started at 11.30pm and moved back by Nine programming, (and dropped for a while). The spokesperson, Victoria Buchan declined to mention the lack of a commitment to the program (and the 150,000-240,000 viewers who watched).

TV networks have to take risks, but this one was done needlessly. There was no reason to waste money on This Afternoon or Nightline and waste the time and jobs of the people involved. Nightline suffered from an almost DOA timeslot, especially when Ten and the ABC have news and current affairs programs starting around 10.30pm.

Nice work Denton: The Gruen Transfer is doing a series of specials that will look at the advertising for the forthcoming election. Great idea. It will be called Gruen Nation.

TONIGHT: The Tour De France highlights at 6pm on SBS, and racing from around 10pm. The ABC has Australian Story, Four Corners (Chris Masters in Afghanistan), Media Watch and Q&A, then Lateline and Lateline Business. All in all a cheap night of TV viewings for the national broadcaster. Ten has MasterChef and Good News Week. Nine has Rescue Special Ops (will it rise tonight?). Seven is weak, Desperate Housewives.

Tonight ACA says it will be revealing all on how Seven’s Dancing With The Stars ruins marriages, relationships etc. Oh, dreary me, not another knife attempt on a program on a rival network.

Ten’s The 7pm Project says it will have a report on the Gulf Of Mexico spill by the Bondi Vet, Dr Chris Brown. Now it won’t be similar to the excellent BBC report used by Foreign Correspondent last Tuesday, but it will be a first in that the mainstream ACA and TT haven’t gone near the story. Now a low cost studio based program has gone and done what they should have done, told the story from the point of view of the damage to the ecology, especially the bird life. More power to Ten and Rove’s production house for this idea.

THE WEEK AHEAD: World Cup semi-finals later in the week and the TDF. State of Origin on Wednesday night. The ratings question of the week is whether Packed To the Rafters audience for Seven tomorrow night be enough to offset the audience in Sydney and Brisbane for the Origin game the night after, even though it’s a dead game.

Source: OzTAM, TV Networks reports