Cricket's final innings for the summer disappoints

The Winners: The One Day International cricket meant that it wasn’t an even night. But viewers clearly preferred (in total), the entertainment on Seven and Ten. Ten’s Modern Family topped the ratings in the 18 to 49 and 25 to 54 age groups because more females watched it than males. The most watched program in 16 to 39s was The Biggest Loser because more females watched it than males watched the cricket. That’s a message for Nine and Cricket Australia, plus their sponsors.

Nine News (6pm) — 1.637 million
Seven News (6pm) — 1.431 million
The Force (Seven, 8 – 8.30 pm) — 1.350 million
Border Security (Seven) (7.30pm) — 1.250 million
One Day Cricket, 2nd session (Nine) (6.30) — 1.227 million
Bones (Seven) (8.30pm) — 1.167 million
Modern Family (Ten) (7.30pm) — 1.125 million
The Biggest Loser: Families (Ten) (6.30pm) — 1.080 million
Sunday Night (Seven) (6.30pm) — 1.058 million

The Losers: The cricket was a bit sad, but the last games of the season are. Now for the World Cup. AFL starts this Friday night on Foxtel (Saturday night on FTA).

News & CA: The Sunday morning chat shows returned softly. Their audiences will rise slowly as more political and business junkies realise they have returned. Nine News was helped by the cricket. Sunday Night‘s line up last night will raise the bar for 60 Minutes return next Sunday.

Nine News (6pm) — 1.637 million
Seven News (6pm) — 1.431 million
Sunday Night (Seven) (6.30pm) — 1.058 million
ABC News (7pm) — 834,000
Ten Evening News (6pm) — 391,000
SBS News (6.30pm) — 198,000

In the morning:

Weekend Sunrise (Seven) (8am) — 357,000
Weekend Today (Nine) (8am) — 240,000
Landline (ABC) (Noon) — 216,000
Insiders (ABC) (9am) — 142,000
Offsiders (ABC) (10.30am) — 134,000
Inside Business (ABC) (10am) — 121,000
Meet The Press (Ten) (8pm) — 21,000

The Stats:

FTA: Seven (3 channels) won with a share of 30.8%, from Nine (3) on 29.8%, Ten (3) with 21.4%, the ABC (4), 12.0% and SBS (2), 6.0%.
Main Channel: Seven won with a share of 24.1%, from Nine on 22.2%, Ten on 18.0%, ABC 1, 9.7% and SBS ONE, 5.2%.
Digital: The 10 digital channels had a total FTA prime time share of 20.6%. GO with 4.5%, won from 7Mate with 3.5%, 7TWO on 3.2%, Gem on 3.0%, Eleven on 2.6%, ABC 2 and News 24 on 0.9% each, SBS TWO and ONE on 0.8% each and ABC 3 on 0.4%. The FTA shares for the 10 digital channels ranged from 18.5% in Sydney to more than 21% in the other four markets.
Pay TV: Seven (3 channels), won with a share of 25.8%, from Nine (3) on 25.0%, Ten (3), was on 18.0%, Pay TV (100 plus channels) was on 13.1%, the ABC (4) was on 10.0% and SBS (2), 5.0%. Foxtel’s shares ranged from 16.9% in Sydney to lows of 10.9% in Melbourne and 10% in Adelaide.
Regional: WIN/NBN won with the cricket and finished with a share of 34% (3 channels), from Prime/7Qld (3) on 29.4%, SC Ten on 20.0% (3), the ABC (4), 10.4% and SBS (2), 6.1%. GO won the digitals with a prime time FTA share of 4.6% from 7TWO on 3.4% and 7Mate on 3.1%. The 10 digital channels had an FTA share of 20.9% last night.

Major Markets: Seven won overall and the main channels in Melbourne and Perth. Nine won overall and in the main channels in Sydney. Nine won overall in Brisbane but Seven won the main channels. GO won Melbourne and Brisbane and split Sydney with 7TWO. 7TWO won Adelaide and 7Mate won Perth.

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

Glenn Dyer’s comments: Seven won overall and the main channels. Seven TWO won the digitals.

Cricket, unfortunately, appeared last night to be a tired looking game. Sunday Night returned and did a good job on the Queensland floods. Seven and Ten showed that viewers like being entertained. Modern Family is close to the best thing on TV.

In reality Seven only won what was a close night because of its dominant performance in Perth where it won by around 13 percentage points as Nine crashed (and the cricket was in Perth).

And irony of ironies there was Nine Perth owner, Bruce Gordon, moaning in The Australian this morning about the ratings of Ten’s 6pm to 7pm news hour and his Nine Perth has the worst performing news service in any of the major capital city markets. It remains the worst performing station in the Nine Network. Nine Adelaide, which is also owned by Mr Gordon’s company, also has a poorly performing news service.

TONIGHT: Well, it’s a big happy 2011 to Australian Story, Four Corners, Media Watch and Q&A which rejoin Lateline and Lateline Business in the ABC’s Monday night line up. Over on Seven it’s another My Kitchen Rules, then Bones and Brothers and Sisters. Ten has Glee to boast about and Nine has a new Two and a Half Men and then the first of its Underbelly movies, Underbelly Files: Tell Them Lucifer Was Here, from 8.30pm. SBS has repeats of Mythbusters and Man vs. Wild.