The Winners: MasterChef was tops with 1.841 million viewers for Ten at 7.30pm; with Seven News second with 1.652 million and Today Tonight 3rd with 1.629 million. Nine News was next with 1.427 million and The Mentalist was 5th with 1.316 million fort Nine at 8.30pm for the last episode of this series. A Current Affair was 6th with 1.196 million and the 7pm ABC News was 7th with 1.129 million people. Nine’s hour of Two and a Half Men repeats averaged 1.107 million from 7pm and the fresh episode of The Big Bang Theory averaged 1.078 million for Nine at 8pm. Home and Away was 10th with 1.061 million and Good News Week had another million plus audience with 1.010 million, thanks to being after MasterChef.

The Losers: For all its high audience numbers, MasterChef. Last night’s episode with UK chef superstar Heston Blumenthal seemed to be so far from the reality of every day good food and eating in Australia as to verge on being food porn. The Australian judges and the contestants (sans Matt Preston) seemed to slavishly follow Mr Blumenthal’s every utterance like any group of religious fanatics. A very contrived and useless episode that didn’t advance the cause of the program one bit. Hung on Seven at 9.30pm, 750,000. Brothers and Sisters did better.

News & CA: Seven News again won nationally and in every market but Sydney (narrow loss) and Melbourne, (bigger loss), where Nine News won. Today Tonight however had a strong night winning all five metro markets. Did ACA lose viewers because it covered the latest deaths from Afghanistan from the top of the program, while TT didn’t? The 7.30 Report averaged 744,000, Four Corners, 634,000 and Media Watch, 588,000. Q&A, 554,000, Lateline, 272,000, Lateline Business, 151,000. Ten News, 968,000, the late News/Sports Tonight, 119,000 at 11.10pm, too late. SBS News at 6.30pm, 191,000. 7am Sunrise, 366,000, 7am Today, 292,000. .

The Stats:

FTA: Seven won with 26.6% from Nine with 25.8%, Ten with 23.3, the ABC with 15.5% and SBS was on 9.7%. Seven won Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. Nine won Melbourne. Seven did well because of the boost from its digital channel, 7TWO. Ten won all the demos again because of the strength of MasterChef, The 7pm Project and Good News Week. But Ten was surprisingly weak in Sydney with a share of 19.6% as MasterChef only averaged a moderate 450,000 against 633,000 in Melbourne. It was the biggest audience in both markets, but MasterChef has done a lot better in Sydney previously, and so has Ten. Nine leads the week with a share of 27.7% from Seven with 25.1% and Ten on 23.3%.

Main Channel: Nine won with a share of 24.1%, from Seven with 23.2%, Ten on 21.5%, ABC 1 on 13.4% and SBS ONE, 9.0%. Nine won Melbourne and Brisbane. Seven won Sydney and Perth; Ten won Adelaide. That was a more accurate reflection of All People on the night. Ten still dominated the demos. Nine leads with a share of 24.5% from Seven on 22.7% and Ten on 22.3%.

Digital: 7TWO’s night with a share of 3.5%, from GO on 1.6%, ABC 2, 1.6%, ONE on 0.8%, SBS TWO on 0.7% and ABC 3 on 0.5%. The six FTA digital channels had a total share of 8.8% with Adelaide having the best share in any market with 13.5%.

Pay TV: Seven won with 22.4%, from Nine with 21.7%, Ten on 18.7%, Pay TV, 13.7%, the ABC, 13.0% and SBS, 8.2%. That’s a total share for the 11 FTA channels of 86.3%. Pay TV’s 100 plus channels shared in the 13.7%.

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

Glenn Dyer’s comments: With the electricity still working, MasterChef last night reminded me of what I had missed the night before. The 7pm Project suffered from the absence of Dave Hughes. The Mentalist finished in a way to try and get us to watch the next series.

TONIGHT: Foreign Correspondent at 8pm on the ABC. Maybe Top Gear on Nine at 7.30pm. SBS has the latest in the World Cup acting and diving classes. Some provincial Australian writers have been taking the Socceroos to task for complaining about the refereeing. Did any of them watch the Switzerland-Chile game and the sending off of a Swiss player after the acting lesson from his alleged Chilean victim?

Ten has MasterChef. plus The 7pm Project. There’s a repeat of NCIS at 8.30pm, after Modern Family, which is firming as the hit of 2010. Seven has a game show called Minute To Win It, which is an overseas format that is already on air in the US. Ignore, the promo in the guides describes the tasks in the program as “off the wall’ which is always a warning for illogical, silly and barely relevant to life as we know it. Nine has Wimbledon for several hours (169,000 for the first day’s coverage and out rated by the soccer last night). At 1am Wednesday the first Twenty20 between Australia and England will be broadcast.

Source: OzTAM, TV Networks reports