A night of light viewing and for Seven it was another less than stellar outing for House Rules — under a million metro viewers — which should be a WTF moment for the network’s programmers. It had 1.578 million ational/ 986,000 metro / 592,000 regional viewers. That hurt the debut of Under The Hammer, which followed. There should have been some viewer synergy between the two programs, but the audience figures saw it wasn’t as strong as Seven would have hoped. It averaged  1.067 million national/ 652,000 metro/ 415,000 regional viewers. That was a drop of more than half a million viewers nationally, or a third of the average for House Rules. But let’s give House Rules another week to bed down (it started weakly in series one last year).

In regional markets it was a very different story as Seven was a clear winner, overall and in the main channels. House Rules was easily the most watched program, in regional markets. The ABC was a clear third and Ten a distant fourth (its regional main channel share of 8.8% was well under the 11.4% metro share). Ten ended the painful So You Think You Can Dance Australia — it averaged 610,000 national/ 447,000 metro/ 163,000 regional viewers) for the final dance-off and the winner’s announcement. Nine’s fresh episode of The Big Bang Theory was the most watched program with 1.770 million national / 1.254 million metro/ 516,000 regional viewers.

SBS debuted the hot new US cable drama, the remake of the great Coen Brothers movie, Fargo (360,000 national/ 255,000 metro/ 105,000 regional viewers). It should have stayed a golden oldie of the big screen. Maybe it will come good, but somehow I doubt it and so did TV viewers last night.

In the morning Nine’s Today show spent another morning under 300,000 metro viewers with 279,000, while Sunrise was well over that important line with 334,000. There are problems with Today that viewers are picking up. Something is not happening on screen and stopped happening last year after Sam Armytage replaced Mel Doyle onSunrise. You only have to look at the gains made by ABC News Breakfast with Michael Rowland and Virginia Trioli to understand how a double hosting works well in TV , as well as David Koch and Sam Armytage on Sunrise. Both Trioli and Armytage are strong female hosts and viewers like that and are saying they want them on air, on all networks.

Network channel share:

  1. Seven (28.6%)
  2. Nine (28.3%)
  3. ABC (18.6%)
  4. Ten (17.5%)
  5. SBS (6.9%)

Network main channels:

  1. Nine (22.2%)
  2. Seven (21.8%)
  3. ABC1 (14.0%)
  4. Ten (11.4%)
  5. SBS ONE (5.5%)

Top digital channels: 

  1. 7mate (4.3%) (?%)
  2. Eleven (3.2%)
  3. GO (3.1%)
  4. ONE, Gem (3.0%)
  5. 7TWO (2.4%)

Top national programs:

  1. The Big Bang Theory (Nine) — 1.770 million
  2. Seven News — 1.710 million
  3. Nine News — 1.645 million
  4. My Kitchen Rules (Seven) – 2.171 million
  5. House Rules (Seven) — 1.578 million
  6. The Big Bang Repeat (Nine), Home and Away (Seven) — 1.547 million
  7. ABC News — 1.296 million
  8. 7.30 (ABC1) — 1.179 million
  9. A Current Affair (Nine) — 1.134 million
  10. The Checkout: Factory Seconds (ABC1) — 1.116 million

Top metro programs:

  1. The Big Bang Theory (Nine) — 1.254 million
  2. Seven News — 1.174 million
  3. Nine News — 1.130 million
  4. Seven News / Today Tonight — 1.097 million
  5. The Big Bang Theory repeat (Nine) — 1.071 million
  6. Nine News 6.30pm — 1.018 million

Losers: Seven. The results for House Rules and Under The Hammer would not have made for happy reading this morning at Seven HQ.Metro news and current affairs:

  1. Seven News — 1.174 million
  2. Nine News — 1.130 million
  3. Seven News/ Today Tonight — 1.097 million
  4. Nine News 6.30 pm — 1.018 million
  5. A Current Affair (Nine) – 939,000
  6. ABC News  – 874,000
  7. 7.30 (ABC1) — 768,000
  8. Ten Eyewitness News — 582,000
  9. The Project 7pm (Ten) — 509,000
  10. The Project 6.30pm (Ten) — 369,000

Morning TV:

  1. Sunrise (Seven) – 334,000
  2. Today (Nine) – 279,000
  3. The Morning Show (Seven) — 162,000
  4. News Breakfast (ABC1,  75,000 + 48,000 on News24) — 123,000
  5. Mornings (Nine) — 92,000
  6. Studio 1o (Ten) — 51,000
  7. Wake Up (Ten) —  30,000

Top pay TV channels:

  1. LifeStyle  (2.9%)
  2. Fox 8, TVHITS!  (2.5%)
  3. Discovery (2.0%)
  4. UKTV (1.9%)
  5. A&E (1.7%)

Top pay TV programs:

  1. River Cottage Australia (LifeStyle) – 132,000
  2. AFL: 360 (Fox Footy) – 91,000
  3. Gold Rush (Discovery ) — 77,000
  4. Grand Designs  (LifeStyle) – 66,000
  5. Futurama, Family Guy (Fox 8) – 65,000

*Data © OzTAM Pty Limited 2013. The data may not be reproduced, published or communicated (electronically or in hard copy) in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of OzTAM. (All shares on the basis of combined overnight 6pm to midnight all people.) and network reports.