Seven easily won the first night of the non-ratings ratings battle — the first skirmish of 2018 so to speak, despite another fall in the number of viewers for the first episode of series nine of My Kitchen Rules. MKR averaged 1.70 million national viewers last night — down around 10% from 1.82 million for the first ep of 2017. The metro audience dipped to 1.18 million from 1.30 million, but the regional audience was up to 525,000 from 513,000, which is why TV networks can’t ignore regional viewers, even if Oztam now seems to be saying we have to by limited the number of national audience rankings we can access daily.

The Good Doctor (1.62 million nationally), in fact, saved Seven from what would have been a much closer finish with Nine, who will be happy with what they saw: Married At First Sight averaged  1.27 million (1.29 million a year ago). Travel Guides averaged 858,000 nationally, down a touch from the 908,000 for the first night of 2017. The Good Doctor easily accounted for that and that will be Nine’s weak spot on Monday nights. Seven would have been relieved to see the new story lines and characters in Home and Away put it in the Top 10 nationally with 1.27 million viewers — it had been floundering towards the end of 2017.

Nine though would not have been very happy with the numbers for the relaunch of Today with Georgie Gardner replacing Lisa Wilkinson. Today could only manage 243,000 on average in the metro markets from 7 to 9am, whereas rival Sunrise averaged 308,000 metro viewers — a clear win.  Just look at the way Lisa Wilkinson boosted the number of viewers of Ten’s Sunday Project on Sunday night — the 7pm part was up 88% nationally. And that halo effect carried over to last night and the 7pm part of the program last night again did very well — topping the 7pm ABC News and 7.30 quite easily in metro markets (which will become a worry for the ABC if it persists). 

And here’s the regional top five, Oztam willing: Seven News, 598,000, The Good Doctor, 530,000, MKR, 525,000, Seven News/TT was fourth with 510,000 and Home and Away managed fifth with 577,000.

Network channel share:

  1. Seven (33.6%)
  2. Nine (26.50%)
  3. Ten (18.5%)
  4. ABC (14.8%)
  5. SBS (6.8%)

Network main channels:

  1. Seven (25.6%)
  2. Nine (20.8%)
  3. Ten (13.8%)
  4. ABC (10.4%)
  5. SBS ONE (4.4%)

Top 5 digital channels: 

  1. 7TWO (3.6%)
  2. 7mate (3.2%)
  3. GO (2.8%)
  4. ONE (2.7%)
  5. ABC 2 (2.4%)

Top 10 national programs:

  1. My Kitchen Rules (MKR) (Seven) – 1.707 million
  2. Seven News  — 1.706 million
  3. The Good Doctor (Seven) — 1.625 million
  4. Seven News/Today Tonight — 1.605 million
  5. Nine/NBN News  – 954,000 (? in the regionals) — *
  6. Nine News 6.30 — 952,000 (? in the regionals) — *
  7. Married At First Sight (Nine)  — 1.277 million
  8. Home and Away (Seven) — 1.272 million
  9. A Current Affair (Nine) — 1.245 million
  10. I’M A Celebrity (Ten) — 1.200 million

* Oztam will not allow the release of regional figures for programs such as Nine/NBN News (and Today and Sunrise etc).

Top metro programs:

  1. MKR (Seven) 1.182 million
  2. Seven News — 1.108 million
  3. The Good Doctor (Seven) —1.095 million
  4. Seven News/Today Tonight — 1.095 million

Losers: No one really, a shared night — the return of ABC’s Monday night news and current affairs line up will make it interesting next week.

Metro news and current affairs:

  1. Seven News — 1.108 million
  2. Seven News/Today Tonight — 1.095 million
  3. Nine News — 946,000
  4. Nine News (6.30pm) — 943,000
  5. A Current Affair (Nine) — 900,000
  6. The Project 7pm (Ten) — 708,000
  7. 7pm ABC News – 679,000
  8. 7.30 (ABC) — 640,000
  9. Ten Eyewitness News — 517,000
  10. The Project 6.30pm (Ten) — 433,000

Morning TV: Not possible to give accurate national figures because of the Oztam cuts

Top five pay TV channels: Pay TV industry association has stopped sending data as well

Top five pay TV programs:

  1. NCIS (TVHITS), Paul Murray Live (Sky News)— 51,000
  2. Family Guy (Fox8) — 44,000
  3. Brtannia (showcase) — 43,000
  4. PML Overtime (Sky News), Gone (Universal) — 41,000