The Winners: A week ago I pointed out that the 410,000 margin Australia’s Got Talent had over MasterChef last Tuesday night was the biggest since MasterChef had started. Last night that margin was lifted to 520,000.

Ten has compounding the problem by running a half hour MasterChef (and sharing the hour with Bondi Vet) when the rest of the episodes each night are hour long. MasterChef remains strong, but it is no longer the absolute ratings monster that it was last year and the year before, crushing other programs on rival channels. It gave up more than 280,000 viewers by doing that last night, just as it gave up a lot last week.

That’s a dud programming move.

  1. Australia’s Got Talent (Seven) (7.30pm) — 1.815 million
  2. Winners & Losers (Seven) (8.30pm) — 1.410 million
  3. Seven News (6pm)– 1.369 million
  4. Today Tonight (Seven) (6.30pm) — 1.304 million
  5. MasterChef Australia (Ten) (7.30pm) — 1.295 million
  6. Nine News 6 pm — 1.199 million
  7. Home and Away (Seven) (7pm) — 1.145 million
  8. A Current Affair (Nine) (6.30pm) — 1.132 million
  9. NCIS (Ten) (8.30pm) — 1.117 million
  10. Bondi Vet (Ten) (8pm) — 1.1013 million

The Losers: Nine, running dead again. Nine viewers penalised as a result. So a good program like AFP which would have been suited to a Monday night at 8pm, got buried last night at 8pm by Australia’s Got Talent and MasterChef and averaged 607,000. A crazy decision.

News & CA: A good day for Nine News yesterday. A surprise win for Today in the morning, and Nine News again won in Brisbane which is now Seven’s weakest market at 6pm. Seven News won the rest, but by just 2000 in Sydney.

A Current Affair had a better night, winning Sydney and Melbourne. Lost the rest, so the weakness in Brisbane didn’t extend into the 6.30pm slot for Seven. In fact, Nine’s 17,000 winning margin at 6pm in the news battle became a 40,000 losing margin at 6.30pm.

6.30 with George Negus was again solid.

  1. Seven News (6pm)– 1.369 million
  2. Today Tonight (Seven) (6.30pm) — 1.304 million
  3. MasterChef Australia (Ten) (7.30pm) — 1.295 million
  4. Nine News 6 pm — 1.199 million
  5. A Current Affair (Nine) (6.30pm) — 1.132 million
  6. ABC News (7pm) — 913,000
  7. The 7pm Project (Ten) (7pm) — 815,000
  8. Ten News (5pm) — 619,000
  9. 7.30 (ABC) (7.30pm) — 531,000
  10. Foreign Correspondent (ABC) (8pm) — 509,000
  11. 6.30 with George Negus (Ten) (6.30pm) — 469,000
  12. 6.30 with George Negus (Ten) (10.30pm) — 253,000
  13. SBS News (6.30pm) — 190,000
  14. Insight (SBS) (7.30pm) — 167,000
  15. Late News/Sports Tonight (Ten) (11pm) — 166,000
  16. Lateline (ABC) (10.25pm) — 155,000
  17. SBS News (9.30pm) — 124,000
  18. Lateline Business (ABC) (11pm) — 109,000

In the morning:

  1. Today (Nine) (7am) — 370,000
  2. Sunrise (Seven) (7am) — 353,000

The Stats:

  • FTA: Seven (3 channels) won with a share of 35.3% from Nine (3) on 23.6%, Ten (3) was third with 23.5%, the ABC (4) was on 12.4% and SBS (2) ended with 5.3%. Seven leads the week with 32.7% from Nine on 25.5% and Ten with 23.5%.
  • Main Channel: Seven won with 27.2%, from Ten on 18.6%, Nine was on 15.8%, ABC 1, 8.9% and SBS ONE, 4.1%. Seven leads the week with 25.2% from Nine on 18.5% and Ten with 17.7%.
  • Digital: GO won with 5.4%, from 7mate on 4.3%, 7TWO was on 3.7%, Eleven was on 3.0%, Gem was on 2.4%, ABC 2 was on 2.2%, ONE was on 1.9%, SBS TWO, 1.1%, ABC 3, 0.8% and News 24, 0.5%. That’s an FTA viewing share in prime time of 25.4%. GO leads the week with 4.2% from 7TWO on 4,0% and 7mate on 3.5%.
  • Pay TV: Seven (3 channels) won with a share of 29.6%, from Nine (3) on 18.8%, ten (3) was on 19.7%, Pay TV (100 plus channels) ended with 12.9%, the ABC (4) was on 10.4% and SBS (2) was on 4.4%. The 15 FTA channels had an 87.1% share of prime time TV viewing last night. The 10 digital channels had a share of 21.3%, the five main channels, 65.8%.
  • Regional: Prime/7Qld (3 channels) won with a share of 36.4%, from WIN/NBN (3) on 25.9%, SC Ten (3) was on 21.7%, the ABC (4) was on 10.9% and SBS (2) ended with 5.1%. Prime/7Qld easily won the main channels with daylight second and third. GO won the digitals with 5.0% from 7TWO on 4.5% and 7mate on 3.3%. the 10 digital channels had an FTA viewing share of 26.4%. Prime/7Qld with 33.3%, leads with WIN/NBN on 27.4%. WIN/NBN will catch up tonight thanks to the State of Origin and the strong audiences in regional NSW and Queensland.

Major Markets: A clean sweep to Seven. It won overall and in the main channels in all five metro markets. Nine was second overall in Sydney and Brisbane and shared second with Ten in Melbourne. In the main channels Ten was second in all five markets. GO won the digitals in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. 7mate snatched Perth. Seven leads Nine and Ten in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The State Of Origin will see Nine back in front in Brisbane at least. In Adelaide and Perth it was Seven from Ten and Nine.

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

Glenn Dyer’s comments: Seven, easily. All People and the major demos. The squeeze from Australia’s Got Talent and then Winners & Losers is too much for Nine and Ten.

The big question is whether Nine can catch Seven with the first State of Origin Rugby League game on tonight? It will blitz the field in Sydney and Brisbane, do sort of OK in Melbourne, but Seven will win there and in Adelaide and in Perth.

If Nine had had the programs to have done better on Sunday and Monday nights, it could have used the Origin game to lay down a winning lead for the rest of the week. No such luck.

Nine is promising better programming in the second half of the year, but it was promising that at the start of the year and flopped. Kerry Stokes’ reshuffle of his listed companies as a way of freeing his private equity partner, KKR from Seven Media Group earlier this year did as much to sink Nine’s float as anything else. That deal sucked hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, leaving little behind for Nine’s float.

Australia’s Got Talent was watched by 805,000 viewers in regional areas (Number 1), making a total national audience of 2.620 million with the 1.815 million people who watched in the five metro markets. MasterChef‘s national audience was 1.731 million (436,000 regionally and 1.295 million in the metro markets). That is the biggest national margin that a rival program has had over MasterChef.

TONIGHT: There are some Angry Boys at Suncorp Stadium on the Nine Network from 7.30pm (the ones in Blue and Maroon, aka State of Origin). Then there is Angry Boys on the ABC at 9.30pm. Seven has Australia’s Got Talent. Ten has MasterChef and then one of the final The Oprah Winfrey Shows. Who cares? SBS has East West 101.

Source: OzTAM, TV Networks reports