The Winners: The cricket was weak, Nine was weak and Seven won with much higher figures for all its programs. Ten’s Glee added more than 200,000 viewers from last week. There’s another One Day International in Sydney on Friday night. Now Fridays are usually dead nights, so it will have to do better.

  • Today Tonight (Seven) (6.30pm) — 1.656 million
  • The Force (Seven) (8pm) — 1.556 million
  • Seven News (6pm) — 1.512 million
  • Border Security (Seven) (7.30pm) — 1.493 million
  • Glee (Ten) (7.30pm) –1.337 million
  • Nine News (6pm) — 1.224 million
  • Home and Away (Seven, 7 – 7.30 pm) — 1.067 million
  • City Homicide (Seven, 8.30 – 9.30 pm) — 1.066 million

The Losers: Nine’s simulcast of the one day cricket on its Gem multi-channel (which is supposed to skew towards female viewers over 30 in its programming, which cricket isn’t). The grand total of 1000 people watched the afternoon session of the ODI from, 2pm to 6pm. 3000 people watched the evening session.

An average of 2000 across the broadcast. On the main channel, 683,000 watched the telecast, but Nine seems not have broken that down into afternoon and evening session. The afternoon figures must have been low. Nine handed Ten, Seven and the ABC tens of thousands of viewers last night. A flop all round.

News & CA: ACA was pre-empted for the One Day International cricket. A bad move. ACA would have got around a million viewers. Instead many of those went to Seven for their daily jolt of tabloid TV journalism. Nine News didn’t get a hit from the cricket as a lead in, Seven News did. Its audience was up on a week ago.

  1. Today Tonight (Seven) (6.30pm) — 1.656 million
  2. Seven News (6pm) — 1.512 million
  3. Nine News (6pm) — 1.224 million
  4. ABC News (7pm)– 984,000
  5. The 7pm Project (Ten) (7pm) — 846,000
  6. Ten News (5pm) — 756,000
  7. The 7.30 Report (ABC) (7.30pm) — 692,000
  8. Late News/Sports Tonight (Ten) (10.30pm) — 255,000
  9. Lateline (ABC) (10.30pm) — 209,000
  10. SBS News (6.30pm) — 190,000
  11. SBS News (9.30pm) — 164,000
  12. Lateline Business (ABC) (11.05pm) — 135,000

In the morning:

  1. Sunrise (Seven) (7am) — 420,000
  2. Today (Nine) (7am) — 314,000

The Stats:

  • FTA: Seven (3 channels) with a share of 34.4% from Nine on 27.5% (3), Ten with 19.0% (2), the ABC with 14.1% (4) and SBS on 4.9% (2). Seven leads the week with 31.9% from Nine on 27.4% and Ten on 20.4%.
  • Main Channel: Seven won with a share of 26.9% from Nine on 22.8%, Ten with 18.5%, ABC 1, 11.0% and SBS ONE with 3.9%. Seven leads the week with 26.1% from Nine on 21.9% and Ten with 19.7%.
  • Digital: The Nine FTA digital channels had a total share of 16.9%. GO won with 4.5%, from 7TWO on 4.2% and 7Mate on 3.3%. ABC 2 averaged 2.1%, SBS TWO, 1.0%, ABC 3, 0.6%, ONE and News 24, 0.5% and Gem trailed on 0.2% because of its cricket simulcast. The digital channels had an FTA share in the metro markets that ranged from 13.4% in Sydney up to 18.0% in Melbourne and 21.4% in Adelaide.
  • Pay TV: Seven (channels) won with a share of 28.9%, from Nine (3) on 23.1%, Ten (2) on 15.9%, Pay TV and its 100 plus channels, 13.5%, the ABC (4) with 11.9% and SBS (two), 4.1%. That left the FTA channels with a combined total of 86.5%, made up of 14.1% for the nine digital channels and 72.4% for the five main channels. Foxtel’s Pay TV share ranged from 15.3% in Sydney to 10.7% in Adelaide. Melbourne had a highish 13.5%.
  • Regional: The cricket did OK in regional areas, the 514,000 was a higher proportion than the 683,000 who watched in metro markets. But it wasn’t enough to get Nine home on the night. Prime/7Qld won with 35.9% (three channels) from WIN/NBN on 30.9% (three channels), SC Ten on 16.5% (two channels), the ABC, 12.3% (4) and SBS, 4.4% (2). Prime/7Qld won the main channels with 28.3%, from Nine on 26.5%. GO and 7TWO tied the night with 4.1% each. 7Mate was third with 3.5%. Gem and its cricket simulcast fell to 0.2%. The nine digital channels had an FTA share of 16.4%. Prime/7Qld leads the week with 31.3% from WIN/NBN on 30.3%.

Major Markets: Seven won everywhere overall and in the main channels with Nine second and Ten third, except in the main channels in Perth where it was Ten second and Nine third. GO won the digitals in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, 7TWO won Melbourne and Adelaide. 7Mate was solid, Gem not so because of the cricket and in the Adelaide it rated a zero. Seven now leads in every market for the week so far from Nine and Ten.

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

Glenn Dyer’s comments: On TV soaps, when you stage a death, as Seven did on Packed to the Rafters on Tuesday night, you have to have a soapy funeral. So book your seat at church side and get out the hankies. There’s a repeat of the death episode next Monday night at 9.30pm, just in time to warm viewers up for the next episode on Tuesday.

And speaking of on screen tragedies, the Australian cricket team. Last night. Appalling. All strength to Sri Lanka. Michael Clarke spends too much time doing fashion shoots for Fairfax sport glossies and other PR stuff. Nine will get good figures for the games against England, but the figures last night for the strong Sri Lankan team show that cricket is becoming a secondary sport so far as most TV sports viewers are concerned.

A big decision for PBL Media’s new boss, David Gyngell.

TONIGHT: A weak night, again. Seven’s Beauty and the Geek Australia will do well in the demos. Will Nine’s Getaway see a sign of new life? Cops L.A.C will continue to fade for Nine, Rush likewise for Ten. But Ten also has Bondi Vet on the plus side.

The ABC has I, Spry: The Rise and Fall of A Master Spy — the doco on ASIO. The ABC starts a new drama at 8.30pm called Rake, with Richard Roxburgh —  it is at least worth a look.

Source: OzTAM, TV Networks report