The Winners

  1. My Kitchen Rules (Seven, 7.30pm) — 1.388 million.
  2. Seven News (6pm) — 1.306 million.
  3. Today Tonight (Seven, 6.30pm) — 1.193 million.
  4. ABC News (7pm) — 1.116 million.
  5. A Current Affair (Nine, 6.30pm) — 1.051 million.
  6. Nine News (6pm) — 1.051 million.
  7. Two And A Half Men (Nine, 7.30pm) — 1.043 million.

Seven’s night by a country mile. Daylight was second and almost third. Nine’s audience collapsed after 8pm, Ten’s went missing from 7.30pm when it tried to sneak Undercover Boss USA back into prime time on an important night: it averaged 544,000. Nine’s audience for the repeat of Two And A Half Men and then Million Dollar Drop slumped to the same level. The ABC ran second at 8pm to Seven with Australian Story. Nine ran 4th behind Seven, Ten and the ABC from 8.30pm. It’s starting to look like the dark days when Eddie McGuire was running Nine, and hosting onscreen flops. The 7pm ABC News won that time slot!

The Losers

Nine and especially Ten. Again. They have no answer to Seven at the moment. It’s sounding like a broken record and the programs Seven is winning with aren’t particularly brilliant either (A cooking show, lots of programs appealing to women viewers and a big adult soap on Tuesdays at 8.30pm) Million Dollar Drop at 8.30 pm, 570,000. Conviction Kitchen on Seven at 9.30pm, is fading with 743,000 viewers. Two And A Half Men, the 8pm repeat, 709,000 (after the 7.30pm episode with 1.043 million).

News & CA

  1. Seven News (6pm) — 1.306 million.
  2. Today Tonight (Seven, 6.30pm) — 1.193 million.
  3. ABC News (7pm) — 1.116 million.
  4. A Current Affair (Nine, 6.30pm) — 1.051 million.
  5. Nine News (6pm) — 1.051 million.
  6. Australian Story (ABC, 8pm) — 871,000.
  7. 7.30 (ABC, 7.30pm) — 855,000.
  8. The 7PM Project (Ten, 7pm) — 755,000.
  9. Four Corners (ABC, 8.30pm) — 742,000.
  10. Ten News (Ten, 5 – 6.30 pm) — 669,000.
  11. Media Watch (ABC, 9.15pm) — 654,000.
  12. Q & A (ABC, 9.35pm) — 624,000.
  13. 6.30 With George Negus (Ten, 6.30 – 7 pm) — 450,000.
  14. Lateline (ABC, 10.30pm) — 267,000.
  15. 6.30 With George Negus (Ten, 10.45 – 11.15 pm) — 204,000.
  16. SBS News (6.30pm) — 203,000.
  17. Ten late News/Sports Tonight (11.15pm) — 144,000.
  18. Lateline Business (ABC, 11.05pm) — 114,000.
  19. SBS late News (9.30pm) — 107,000.

Mornings

  1. Sunrise (Seven, 7am) — 403,000.
  2. Today (Nine, 7am) — 345,000.

Seven News won nationally, lost Brisbane to Nine. Today Tonight won nationally, A Current Affair won Melbourne and Brisbane. TT won the rest.

Ten’s News At Five should be renamed Ten’s News Too Long. A marathon effort by the various newsreading teams around the country. Ninety minutes! With Nine and Seven running an hour of news from 4.30 pm, then another half an hour at 6 pm, its overkill from the commercials (Plus TT and ACA and now 6.30 With George Negus on Ten). That’s four and a half hours of news from the three channels from 4.30pm to 6.30pm with only the game shows at 5.30pm on Seven and Nine to break the tedium.

If news is so expensive, as TV network executives and other claim, why is so much “expensive’ programming allowed to be run day after day? The real story is that news is cheap when you can slice and dice it, and use it a number of times each day. Remember that the networks have already run news broadcasts during the day and some of the stories, especially ones from overseas, might be appearing for the third or fourth time in a day. That’s cheap TV and means the networks (and the ABC for that matter) don’t have to use expensive journalists and producers to fill holes in later broadcasts, they can just repackage existing stories for later bulletins, using the same vision and sound bites. That’s both a dumbing down and a cheapening of news. Productivity might be great, but we are none the wiser and the insights gained from watching TV news remain just as elusive.

The Stats

  • FTA: Seven (3 channels) won with a share of 33.4% from Nine (3) on 22.4%, Ten (3) was on 20.5%, the ABC (4) ended with 18.3% and SBS (4) was on 5.3%. Seven leads the week on 31.0% from Nine in 25.4% and Ten back on 20.4%.
  • Main Channel: Seven won easily with a share of 24.4% from Nine on 17.4%, ABC 1 was on 15.0%, Ten was on 14.9% and SBS ONE ended with 4.5%. Seven leads the week with 23.2% from Nine in 18.4% and the ABC on 14.8% and Ten on 14.7%. Ten’s stronger line up tonight will see it back in front of the ABC.
  • Digital: 7TWO won with 5.1%, from Eleven on 4.4%, 7Mate was on 3.8%, Gem ended with 2.6%, GO was on 2.5%, ABC 2, 2.0%, ONE was on 1.2%, SBS TWO and News 24 finished with 0.8% each and ABC3 was on 0.6%. That’s a total share of FTA viewing last night of 23,8%, 7TWO leads the week with 4.3% from GO and Eleven on 4.0% each. Neighbours was the most watched digital program with 402,000, which was also its highest audience so far on Eleven. but 6.30 With George Negus on the main channel still had more viewers (whew!)
  • Pay TV: Seven (3 channels) won with a share of 27.5%, from Nine (3) on 18.5%, Ten (3) was on 16.9%, the ABC ended with 15.1% for its four channels, Pay TV (100 plus channels) was on 14.7% and SBS (2) was on 4.4%. That was a low return for Foxtel on a Monday night with its higher rating NRL game of the night. The 15 FTA channels had a total share of viewing last night of 85.3% with the digital channels making up 19.5% and the five main channels, 65.8%.
  • Regional: Prime/7Qld (3 channels) won with a share of 32.4% from WIN/NBN (3) on 26.6%, SC Ten (3) was next with 18.9%, the ABC, (4) was on 16.4% and SBS (2) ended with 5.7%. Prime/7Qld won the main channels with 23.1%, from WIN/NBN on 21.7%, the ABC was third with 13.3% and SC Ten was 4th with 12.4% (for the second night in a row). 7TWO won the digitals with 5.7%, from Eleven on 4.6% and 7Mate on 3.6%. The 10 digital channels had an FTA share of prime time last night of 24.5%. Prime/7Qld leads the week with 30.7% from WIN/NBN on 27.9%.
  • Major Markets: For the second night the ABC was all over a weak Ten for third spot or better in some markets. In Sydney Ten and Nine were very weak and the ABC did well. Seven won overall and the main channels in every market. In Sydney Nine and the ABC shared second with Ten next. In Melbourne, Nine and Ten were second and third overall and in the main channels. In Brisbane it was Seven from Nine and Ten, but in the main channels the ABC was third. In Both Adelaide and Perth the ABC was third and Ten fourth overall and in the main channels. 7TWO won everywhere bar Melbourne where Eleven got up. Seven leads the week from Nine and Ten in each of the five metro markets.

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

Glenn Dyer’s comments: Seven’s night, very easily. To win by almost 11 ratings points in the overall FTA battle, seven points in the main channels and by 10 points overall with Pay TV included, on a Monday night, tells us how weak the offerings from Nine and Ten, the main commercial rivals, were last night. With My Kitchen Rules and Winners and Losers tonight, Seven will win the night and the week.

Four Corners was potentially a good story, but why did we wait for what seemed an eternity (but probably five minutes or so) to see pictures of the three victims? Who cares about the set up shots about Bowraville at the top, they could have ended the story. It could have been put together in a better fashion. Four Corners’ management and the people involved in the report should look at Australian Story‘s current episode on Perth lawyer, John Quigley, (two parts, nearly an hour) to see how good TV is done.

Correction: OZTAM has corrected the figure for completely Digital Terrestrial TV to 52% from the 55% figure in yesterday’s release..

TONIGHT: My Kitchen Rules on Seven and then Winners and Losers. Ten has Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation and NCIS. The ABC has Foreign Correspondent. SBS has a science series called The Secret Life of Chaos at 8.30pm, that’s after Insight. Nine has Top Gear at 8.30pm which is a repeat, so the figures won’t be good. Nine has run out of new Top Gears for a while. I wonder what the slump in the ratings are doing to Nine’s talks with the BBC about a new contract to replace the two year agreement that ends this year? The BBC insists Nine produce a local version, Nine doesn’t want to because it doesn’t rate. That’s bad luck for Nine which only has itself to blame for trashing a good program by overusing it. The Top Gear magazine is produced in this market by the stumbling magazine arm of Nine, ACP.

Source: OzTAM, TV Networks reports