The Winners: Only four programs with a million or more viewers, all on Seven … end of night. The Farmer Wants a Wife on Nine at 9.30pm 919,000. Heroic. The AFL Footy Show in Melbourne (300,000), Adelaide (84,000), Perth (46,000); a total of 430,000 viewers. That’s just a bit more than the Melbourne broadcast got three Thursdays ago when it started the year with 414,000.

  1. My Kitchen Rules (Seven) (7.30pm) — 1.333 million
  2. Seven News (6pm) — 1.190 million
  3. Criminal Minds (Seven) (8.30pm) — 1.170 million
  4. Today Tonight (Seven) (6.30pm) — 1.144 million

The Losers: Ten and Nine.

News & CA: Seven News won everywhere bar Brisbane. TT beat ACA in all five metro markets. A weak night for the Nine news and current affairs program. Hungry Beast is included in News and Current affairs, even though it’s not from ABC News and Current Affairs. That’s because on last night’s showing the program is more current than the brawling 6.30pm twins, ACA and TT.

Hungry Beast actually scooped the rest of the media on why we are not seeing more vision of Australian troops fighting in Afghanistan, except what defence and the minister want released. It showed never before seen vision of a patrol that was quite graphic, and then got a former head of the Army to talk about how the vision fell into “black hole” in the Defence department. To me when the former highest ranking officer in the army talks about black holes in defence, that’s a news story.

  1. Seven News (6pm) — 1.190 million
  2. Today Tonight (Seven) (6.30pm) — 1.144 million
  3. Nine News (6pm) — 974,000
  4. ABC News (7pm) — 945,000
  5. A Current Affair (Nine) (6.30pm) — 921,000
  6. The 7PM Project (Ten) (7pm) — 754,000
  7. Ten News (5pm) — 740,000
  8. 7.30 (ABC) (7.30pm) — 641,000
  9. Hungry Beast (ABC) (9.30pm) –441,000
  10. Ten Evening News (6.30pm) — 337,000
  11. 6PM With George Negus (Ten) (6pm) — 335,000
  12. Lateline (ABC) (10.30pm) — 211,000
  13. 6PM With George Negus (10.30pm) (repeat) — 204,000
  14. SBS News (6.30pm) — 193,000
  15. SBS News (9.30pm) — 127,000
  16. Late News/Sports Tonight (Ten) (11pm) — 127,000
  17. Lateline Business (ABC) (11.05pm) — 95,000

In the morning:

  1. Sunrise (Seven) (7am) — 363,000
  2. Today (Nine) (7am) — 357,000

The Stats:

  • FTA: Seven won with a share of 34.1% for its three channels (higher than Tuesday night!), from Nine (3) on 26.2%, Ten on 20.0% (3), the BC (4) was on 15.2% and SBS (2) ended with 4.5%. Seven now leads the week with 32.2% from Nine on 27.6% and Ten on 19.7%.
  • Main Channel: Seven won with a share of 25.9% from Nine with 21.2%, Ten was on 15.0%, ABC 1, 12.0% and SBS ONE, 3.6%. Seven leads the week with 24.8% from Nine on 20.9% and Ten with 15.5%.
  • Digital: 7TWO won with 4.4%, from 7Mate and Eleven with 3.7% each, Gem was on 2.6%, GO, 2.4%, ABC 2, 1.8%, ONE was on 1.2%, SBS TWO and News 24, 0.9% and ABC 3, 0.6%. That’s a total FTA share for the 10 digital channels in prime time last night of 24.2%. 7TWO now leads the week on 4.0% from GO on 3.9% and 7Mate on 3.4%, with Eleven on 3.3%.
  • Pay TV: Seven (3 channels) won with a share of 27.8%, from Nine (3) on 21.3%, Ten (3) was on 16.3%, Pay TV (100 plus channels) averaged 15.6%, the ABC (4), finished with 12.4% and SBS (2) ended with 3.7%. The 15 FTA shares had a prime time viewing share last night of 84.4%, made up of 17.9% for the digital channels and 66.5% for the five main channels.
  • Regional: Prime/7Qld (3 channels) won with a share of 34.2%, from WIN/NBN (3) on 29.8%, SC Ten (3) was on 17.6% and the ABC (4) ended with 14.5%, SBS finished with 3.9%. In the main channels, Prime/7Qld won with a share of 25.5%, from WIN/NBN on 25.1%, SC Ten was on 11.7% and ABC 1, 11.1%. In the digitals 7TWO won with 4.9%, from Eleven on 4.6% and 7Mate on 3.9%. The 10 digital channels had an FTA prime time viewing share last night of 23.5%. Prime/7Qld leads the week on 31.2%, from WIN/NBN on 30.1%.

Major Markets: It was Seven from Nine and Ten for the main channels and overall in all but a couple of places. In Melbourne Nine won the main channels with the AFL Footy Show programming rating 300,000 viewers. In Perth, the AFL Footy Show was no help to Nine and it finished third overall and on the main channels with Ten in second behind Seven. In Adelaide the ABC pushed Ten out of third in the main channels. Seven leads the week from Nine and Ten in all five metro markets after last night.

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

Glenn Dyer’s comments: Seven’s night. Neither Nine or Ten were in the hunt. The Ten Network has ended its 6pm & 6.30pm news and current affairs gamble at a cost of millions of dollars in wasted money.

The Network today announced that it was axing the 6.30pm Evening News and moving 6PM with George Negus to 6.30pm to take on ACA and Today Tonight. The 5pm Ten News will be extended to 6.30pm (a weak compromise). The Negus program is at least picking up an extra 200,000 to 300,000 viewers when it is repeated at 10.30pm, giving it a total daily audience of 500,000 to 700,000.

The Ten statement said:

“This change in TEN’s early evening schedule is in response to audience feedback, which has been strongly supportive of the program as a unique, credible commercial television offering, yet has revealed a preference for it to be scheduled in the more traditional public affairs timeslot.”

What this now means is that Ten has no programming that it can use at 6pm to 7pm. Neighbours and The Simpsons, the old standbys, are now holding up Eleven, the new digital channel. Ten will now have the longest regular news broadcast seen in recent years on Australian TV at 90 minutes (including ads).

Sydney 6.30pm reader, Sandra Sully now goes back to the late News, after the Negus repeat and Kath Robinson, who did a short news in the Negus programs, returns to the 6am News — which is very much invisible.

Ten’s biggest problem isn’t from 6pm to 7pm, it’s the dearth of post 7pm successes, except NCIS and The Biggest Loser. Ten says its share of the audience is up, when it lumps in the new Eleven channel, which wasn’t on air a year ago. Its main channel offerings have been very weak.

TONIGHT: Seven’s female skewing programming from 7pm, including Grey’s Anatomy. Nine had CSI and then the NRL Footy Show from 9.30pm in Sydney and Brisbane (where it will not be noticed). Ten has The 7pm Project, The Biggest Loser and The Good Wife in the north. The opening AFL game (Carlton vs. Richmond) in the south. The ABC has Whites.

Source: OzTAM, TV Networks reports