Shameless Corey promotion. Our friends at In The Mix got hold of a copy of Narre Warren party boy and Big Brother invader Corey Worthington’s debut single — a cover of The Beastie Boys’ classic punk anthem Fight For Your Right. It’s official release is not until next week, but you can listen to it on the In The Mix website here.

Net moves from right to left. With elections approaching in both Australia and the United States, the role of blogs and bloggers is attracting increasing attention. Writing in The New Republic recently, Jonathan Chait described the netroots (the online community of liberal Democratic Party activists) as “the most important mass movement in US politics”. — John Quiggin, MEAA, The Future of Journalism

Nicky Webster, embarrassing herself since 2000: The tiny flying hero of the Sydney Olympics, now all grown up and airbrushed by FHM, Nicky Webster, was recently ired by a Hamish & Andy prank at her expense. The desperately aspiring starlet then rang the radio station to complain. Only problem — she rang the wrong radio station. Listen here.

Not the real Troy “Snedger” Buswell. Thanks to Crikey reader Luke Hughes for this: “3AW make yet another bad mistake on their website. Prone to elementary spelling errors, today they dragged some poor mustachioed sop from the photo library and permanently consigned him to snedger-dom Troy Buswell-style. Looks a like a lawsuit to me…”

The real Troy Buswell

 

N-ked fifteen-year-old = record traffic: The hubub over Vanity Fair‘s not-exactly-naked Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana photos generated record traffic for the Conde Nast pub’s Web site. The kinda-scandal broke over the weekend, and picked up steam on Sunday night, when the New York Times weighed in on this important story. That pushed the magazine to push up the Web publication of its own story and accompanying 18-slide slideshow earlier than it had planned, says executive online editor Michael Hogan. But that alone was enough to generate 365,000 page views that night; VF.com generally gets around 100,000 page views a day, he says. — Silicon Alley Insider

More programming woes for Nine. Underbelly finishes next week and the following Wednesday Nine was gearing up for a big one off TV special: Madeline: One Year On: Campaign for Change. Never mind that it went to air in the UK this week and would be two weeks late on Australian TV, Nine was building up the publicity machine. That was, until it saw the ratings from Britain. Poor, is the best that can be said. The two hour ITV special on McCann pulled 3.5 million viewers in Britaain and a 14% share over two hours from 8pm Wednesday. There had been a big plug for it in the London Sun but the TV audience didn’t watch. At 8pm the BBC won the slot with a show called Traffic Cops on BBC 1 against the McCann story. At 9pm BBC 1 had the The Apprentice, which pulled in 6.8 million viewers and a 27% share. So what will the Nine do for the 8.30pm slot on 16 May?

Last night’s TV ratings
The Winners: Just 10 programs with a million or more viewers. The finale of The Biggest Loser averaged 1.886 million for Ten from 7.30pm. Seven News was second with 1.473 million, ahead of Today Tonight with 1.355 million. Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares was 4th with 1.216 million for Nine at 8.30pm and Home and Away was 5th with 1.216 million. The 7pm ABC News was next with 1.198 million and it was just ahead of Nine News with 1.186 million. The Footy Shows were 8th with a combined figure of 1.140 million and A Current Affair was 9th with 1.112 million. The repeat of Two And A Half Men averaged 1.081 million at 7pm for Nine for 10th and final spot in the million viewer mob.

The Losers: Seven after 7.30pm – Deal Or No Deal at 5.30pm with 854,000 had more viewers than a program at 8pm (How I Met Your Mother , 834,000) or Ghost Whisperer at 8.30pm (714,000). That’s evidence of Seven being squeezed by the final of The Biggest Loser on Ten and then Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and The Footy Shows on Nine. Getaway was hit by The Biggest Loser: it’s audience fell under a million to 968,000. But next week will Ten be the biggest loser? Well, Big Brother fell under a million last night to 996,000 at 7pm. It was beaten by the repeat of Two And A Half Men, which is brain dead TV. That’s not good because BB fed into the finale of TBL at 7.30pm and should have done better. TBL almost doubled BB ‘s audience. That’s a big signal about what the audience wants to watch. Lost averaged 683,000 for Seven.

News & CA: Seven News again won nationally and in every market but Today Tonight lost Melbourne and Brisbane to ACA while winning nationally. Both Nine News and ACA fell under 300,000 in Sydney last night. Seven News and TT won by well over 100,000 viewers in that market. The 7pm ABC news was a solid second in Sydney with 375,000 to Nine’s 283,000 and Seven News on 422,000. The 7.30 Report averaged 974,000 (and with 304,000 viewers, beat ACA in Sydney, even though it was up against the finale of TBL ). Lateline finished with 346,000 and Lateline Business had 152,000 people watching. Ten News averaged 827,000 and the late News was replaced by the Twenty20 cricket from India (355,000). SBS News averaged 172,000 on SBS at 6.30pm and 202,000 at 9.30pm. 7am Sunrise, 396,000, 7am Today, 323,000 and the first time for ages that it has remained above 300,000 for two successive days. The gap continues to narrow. Seven whiz kid, Adam Boland is under pressure.

The Stats: Nine and Ten won 6pm to midnight with a share of 28.5% each (31.8% and 23.0% for Nine and Ten last week respectively). Seven was next with 22.1% (24.7%), the ABC was on 16.5% (16.0%) and SBS was on 4.3% (4.5%). Ten won Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. Nine won Melbourne and Adelaide. Nine leads the week 27.2% to 26.7% for Ten and 26.1% for Seven. It will be close, Seven could win with the change made on Saturday night with the Orlando Bloom movie. No regional figures. In the 6pm to 10.30 slot with pay TV included, Fusion Strategy said Ten won with a 25.92% share (19.62% a year ago) from Nine with 22.88% (24.06%), Seven with 19.06% (23.83%), the ABC with 14.84% (13.41%), Pay TV with 13.54% (%14.49%) and SBS with 3.76% (4.59%). The joint win by Ten was fine, but it must be remembered that two years ago the first finale of TBL pushed Ten to a 35.7% share from 6pm to midnight and a clear win!

Glenn Dyer’s comments: The Seven Network will be hoping that life improves for it from next week. The Ten Network now has only Big Brother running at 7pm for Seven to contend with as it attempts to rebuild its ratings. So far Seven has been doing well with the oldies, like Nine was last year. Seven thinks that with Underbelly finishing next week, Nine will also be weaker from the week after. Depending on Gordon Ramsay three nights a week is going to be a big ask. Nine has done that in the past with CSI and the appeal has disappeared. But Seven need a few big hits to maintain its favouritism for the ratings title. The number of programs it lands in top 10 and top 20 lists in each demographics is also changed: it no longer has as many programs around the top five. Seven has again changed Saturday, flicking Inspector Frost for a repeat of Pirates of the Caribbean.

Source: OzTAM, TV Networks reports