A close night last night. Seven, Nine and Ten had the usual offerings, but SBS stood out with its new Sydney-based crime drama, Deep Water (512,000 nationally, 373,000 metro and 139,000 in the regions). Watch the next three episodes because it is better than Hyde and Seek, Nine’s new police thriller/drama on Monday nights. Deep Water at 8.30pm and its lead in, Great American Railroad Journeys (512,000 nationally) boosted SBS’s share to one of its highest (without sport) this year.

In fact last night’s metro ratings were a bit over the place. Seven win Total People narrowly from Nine, Ten and the ABC. But in the main channels (where the real battle is fought nightly), it was Nine from Seven, the ABC and a weak Ten. In the regions, Seven won Total People from Nine, ten and the ABC. In the main channels though Nine won from Seven, Ten and the ABC.

The X Factor (1.268 million nationally), The Block (1.279 million nationally) and The Bachelorette (788,000 nationally) all had ho hum nights last night, while Ten’s The Wrong Girl did OK its second night out with 802,000 nationally (it was hit by the blackouts in Adelaide last week), but deserves more and isn’t helped by the flagging lead in, The Bachelorette.

Nine News from 6 to 7pm had an unusually weak night last night and lost Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth to Seven. Nine won Brisbane. Ten News at 5pm was also very weak last night, slipping under 400,000 metro viewers to 398,000. Is that daylight saving impacting? Sunrise with 287,000 won metro breakfast for a second morning from Today with 271,000. That’s daylight saving and the school holidays impacting.

The top five regional programs were: Seven News, 568,000, Home and Away 507,000, Doctor Doctor 463,000, Seven News/Today Tonight, 462,000, The X Factor, 460,000.

Oztam has taken issue with my call of last week that the Adelaide ratings for the night of the great blackout should have been declared a “no result” and that it was unfair to measure viewing on a night when viewing was so disrupted:

Oztam says:

“The ratings system worked as it should: if homes had no power, they could not view their TVs. The meters in OzTAM panel homes are on battery back up and continue to meter TV set use and store data for collection. Panel homes in Adelaide returned data the following morning and the ratings data they returned (i.e., that the TV sets were not in use during the statewide power outage) reflects the fact that those homes could not watch TV. It is accordingly incorrect to suggest that last Wednesday’s ratings for Adelaide should have been “declared a no result.”

I mentioned last Thursday in my ratings report that Nielsen, the ratings takers, had mentioned a number of disclaimers about the night’s data – that it was incomplete. Oztam says those disclaimers “were to remind data users that the percentage of homes on OzTAM’s Adelaide panel that delivered data for that ratings day (86 per cent) was below the typical daily performance of at least 90 per cent. The resulting produced sample was still robust, and standard weighting processes are in place for balanced demographic projections to the population.”. — Click here to read Glenn Dyer’s full TV ratings.