The Winners: Paper Giants, the teledrama about the birth of Cleo and Ita Buttrose’s presence in Australian public life, did the job for the ABC last night. It was a bit long though. Rob Charlton’s Kerry Packer is excellent, especially the scene where he tells print managers at ACP how to do their job. It is hard to see Seven, Nine or Ten handling this story as well as the ABC did. It was a show for the boomers (music and all) and no wonder it did well in the older demos. Anyone under 40 watching would have been interested, but not hooked.

  1. Seven News (6pm) — 1.396 million
  2. Mighty Ships (Seven) (6.30pm) — 1.322 million
  3. Nine News (6pm) — 1.299 million
  4. Border Security (Seven) (7.30pm) — 1.278 million
  5. Paper Giants (ABC) (8.30pm) — 1.207 million
  6. The Force (Seven) (8pm) — 1.186 million
  7. 60 Minutes (Nine) (7.30pm) — 1.127 million
  8. The Biggest Loser: Families (Ten) (6.30pm) — 1.012 million

The Losers: No real change from a week ago. Nine very weak from 8.30pm. The Mentalist was a repeat and just 686,000 watched. Ten was weaker. Hawaii Five 0 at 8.30pm, 673,000. Harry’s Law, a repeat, at 9.30pm, 223,000. Appalling figures.

News & CA: Seven rested Sunday Night because its non-ratings. Nine kept the new Sunday edition of ACA going and 60 Minutes, which is a plus. Nine News won Sydney and Adelaide, Seven News won the rest.

  1. Seven News (6pm) — 1.396 million
  2. Nine News (6pm) — 1.299 million
  3. 60 Minutes (Nine) (7.30pm) — 1.127 million
  4. A Current Affair (Nine) (6.30pm) — 997,000
  5. ABC News (7pm) — 824,000
  6. Ten News (5pm) — 417,000
  7. Ten Evening News (6pm) — 275,000
  8. SBS News (6.30pm) — 167,000

In the morning:

  1. Weekend Sunrise (Seven) (8am) — 321,000
  2. Weekend Today (Nine) (8am) — 280,000
  3. Landline (ABC) (Noon) — 232,000
  4. Insiders (ABC) (9am) — 224,000
  5. Inside Business (ABC) (10am) — 183,000
  6. Offsiders (ABC) (10.30am) — 158,000
  7. Meet The Press (Ten) (8am) — 29,000

The Stats:

  • FTA: Seven (3 channels) won with a share of 29.4% from Nine (3) on 25.1%, Ten (3) with 21.9%, the ABC (4) was on 18.3% and SBS (2) ended with 5.2%.
  • Main Channel: Seven with 24.3% won from Nine on 18.1%, ABC 1 was on 16.5%, Ten was on 15.6% and SBS was on 4.5%.
  • Digital: GO won with 4.2%, from 7TWO on 3.4%, with Eleven on 3.3%, ONE on 3.0%, Gem was on 2.8%, 7mate, 1.7%, ABC 2, 1.1%, SBS TWO, 0.7%, News 24, 0.5% and ABC 3, 0.3%. That’s a total FTA viewing share in prime time of 21.0%.
  • Pay TV: Seven (3 channels) won with 23.8%, from Nine (3) on 20.3%, Ten (3), 17.7%, Pay TV (100 plus channels), 16.6%, the ABC (4), 14.8% and SBS (2), 4.2%. The 15 FTA channels had a prime time viewing share last night of 83.4%, made up of 17.1% for the digital channels and 66.3% for the five main channels.
  • Regional: Prime/7Qld won with a share of 31.2% for their three channels, from WIN/NBN (3) on 29.6%, SC Ten (3) was on 19.0%, the ABC (4) ended with 15.4% and SBS (2) was on 4.8%. The main channels were won by Prime/7Qld with 22.8%, from Nine on 20.9%, ABC 1, which was third with 13.6% ahead of SC Ten on 13.4%. GO won the digitals with 5.5% from 7TWO on 5.0% and Eleven with 3.3%. The 10 digital channels had an FTA prime time viewing share last night of 25.1%.

Major Markets: Seven won from Nine and Ten overall in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Nine won Melbourne overall from Seven and Ten. In the main channels Seven won from Nine and the ABC in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. In Perth it was Seven from the ABC and Ten as Nine was very weak. GO won Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. 7TWO won Melbourne and Adelaide

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

Glenn Dyer’s comments: Ratings finished on Saturday night with Seven winning overall, the main channels and the digitals in a clean sweep. Its overall share is up around 3 percentage points. Nine’s was down by the same, Ten also lost viewers on the main channel but picked up viewers with Eleven, which wasn’t broadcasting last year.

Paper Giants was a misnomer. Cleo magazine was printed on higher grade paper than the name implies. By whatever, it was the most watched program after 8.30pm.

Seven’s terrible Mighty Ships attracted a lot of viewers. Real lightweight holiday viewing. Did anyone pay attention?

Unlike the last few Sunday evenings in ratings when Seven was just beaten by Nine, Seven had a clear win last night and will win the week as Nine runs really dead tonight and Seven has a fresh episode of Winners and Losers tomorrow night. It will be interesting to see how it does without a strong rating program like My Kitchen Rules in front of it at 7.30pm.

Ten’s performance last night was the digital channels masked a weak effort on the main channels in both metro and regional markets. Paper Giants boosted ABC 1 past Ten.

TONIGHT: The second part of Paper Giants on the ABC. Australian Story as well. Repeats for Nine from 7pm to midnight. Only the Lotto draw in some states around 8.30pm is new!

Seven goes for a couple of Kiwi imports from 7.30pm after a fresh Home and Away. Bones is a repeat at 8.30 pm, the declining Brothers & Sisters at 9.30pm is fresh. Ten has The 7pm Project, then a repeat of Glee, then a fresh Good News Week (which is fading anyway). NRL on Foxtel if you are interested.

Source: OzTAM, TV Networks reports