The Winners: Seven’s night, with wins in All People and the major demos. Nine was surprisingly weak, Ten did better with NCIS‘s return helping the night. The two hours of The X Factor with more than 1.4 million viewers, was too much for the other networks to overcome.

Two and a Half Men shed a million viewers last night to 1.252 million from 2.293 million in metro markets last week. As detailed below, the loss in the US on Monday night was just on a third from the debut to episode two, so the metro audience loss here was much worse for Nine.

  1. The X Factor (Seven) (7.30pm) — 1.410 million
  2. Today Tonight (Seven) (6.30pm) — 1.263 million
  3. Two and a Half Men (Nine) (8.30pm) — 1.252 million
  4. Seven News (6pm) — 1.240 million
  5. Home and Away (Seven) (7pm) — 1.160 million
  6. NCIS (Ten) (8.30pm) — 1.069 million

The Losers: The Nine Network has a lot of tough decisions to make this morning: what does it save and what does it bone?

  • The Joy of Sets at 9pm; audience more than halved from last week’s debut 1.165 million to last night’s 545,000.
  • Charlie’s Angels, not such a flop, but 815,000 viewers from 7.30pm just beat The Renovators with 805,000 on Ten and both were a very distant second and third to The X Factor.
  • Survivor: South Pacific on Nine, at 9.30pm, 455,000. Off to GO?

News & CA: Nine News won Sydney, lost the rest with big margins to Seven News. Nine News lost Melbourne by 51,000 and Brisbane by 80,000.

A Current Affair wasn’t helped by this and had another poor night, losing all five metro markets to Today Tonight by a massive 371,000 viewers. It’s the 16th night in a row under one million metro viewers.

In the morning, Sunrise eased and Today rose to close the gap.

And the standout bit of news and current affairs that I managed to see last night was Foreign Correspondent‘s Stephen McDonell reporting from Shangri-la in deep south-west China, near Tibet, with an Australian man running a very interesting empowerment program for locals. It was the sort of program that should be of interest here.

  1. Today Tonight (Seven) (6.30pm) — 1.263 million
  2. Seven News (6pm) — 1.240 million
  3. Nine News (6pm) — 974,000
  4. A Current Affair (Nine) (6.30pm) — 892,000
  5. ABC News — 891,000 (7pm)
  6. The 7pm Project (Ten) (7pm) — 768,000
  7. 7.30 (ABC) (7.30pm) — 642,000 (+ 29,000 on News 24 simulcast)
  8. Ten News (5pm) — 566,000
  9. Foreign Correspondent (ABC) (8pm) — 544,000
  10. Late News/Sports Tonight (Ten) (10.30pm) — 396,000
  11. 6.30 with George Negus (Ten) (6.30pm) — 384,000
  12. Insight (SBS) (7.30pm) — 190,000
  13. SBS News (9.30pm) — 187,000
  14. Lateline (ABC) (10.30pm) — 183,000
  15. SBS News (6.30pm) — 138,000
  16. Lateline Business (ABC) (11.05pm) — 118,000 (+ 16,000 on News 24 at 8.30pm)

In the morning:

  1. Sunrise (Seven) (7am) — 355,000
  2. Today (Nine) (7am) — 323,000

The Stats:

  • FTA: Seven (3 channels) won with a share of 32.6% from Ten (3) on 25.1%, Nine (3) on 23.5%, the ABC (4) was on 13.4% and SBS (4) ended on 5.4%. Seven leads the week with 32.4% from Nine on 25.3% and Ten on 22.8%.
  • Main Channel: Seven won with a share of 25.7% from Ten on 18.7%, Nine was on 18.1%, ABC 1 was on 9.8% and SBS ONE ended on 4.3%. Seven leads the week with 25.6% from Nine on 18.9% and Ten with 16.1%.
  • Digital: Eleven won with a share of 4.5%, from 7TWO on 3.8%, 7mate was on 3.0%, Gem was on 2.8%, GO was on 2.6%, ABC 2 ended on 2.3%, ONE was on 2.0%, SBS TWO was on 1.1% and ABC 3 and News 24 ended on 0.6% each. That’s an FTA viewing share last night of 23.3%. &TWO leads the week with 3.8% from Eleven on 3.7% and GO on 3.5%.
  • Regional: Prime/7Qld (3 channels) won with a share of 32.0%, from WIN/NBN (3) on 25.1%, SC Ten (3) was on 23.9%, the ABC (4) ended on 13.7% and SBS (2) was on 5.8%. Prime/7Qld won the main channels with 24.3% from WIN/NBN on 19.0% and SC Ten was on 17.7%. 7TWO won the digitals with 4.4%, from Eleven with 3.5% and 7Mate on 3.3%. Gem and ABC 2 were on 3.2% each. The 10 digital channels had a total prime time share last night of FTA viewing of 26.0%. Prime/7Qld leads the week with 32.0% from WIN/NBN on 27.7%. The five most watched programs in regional markets were: 1. The X Factor — 553,000; 2. ACA — 487,000; 3. Nine News — 465,000; 4. Seven News – 458,000; 5. Home and Away — 425,000. Two and a Half Men finished 8th with 379,000.

Pay TV: Seven (3 channels) won with a share of 27.1% from Ten (3) on 20.9%, Nine (3) was on 19.6%, pay TV (200-plus channels) was on 14.6%, the ABC (4) was on 11.1% and SBS (2) ended on 4.5%. The 15 digital channels had an 85.4% share of TV viewing last night. The 10 digital channels had a share of 20.4%, the five main channels a share of 65.0%.

The five most watched pay TV channels last night were:

  1. Fox 8 (3.04%)
  2. TVI (2.41%)
  3. Lifestyle (2.30%)
  4. Disney (1.88%)
  5. Nickelodeon (1.69%)

The five most watched pay TV programs last night were:

  1. Eastenders (UKTV) — 79,000
  2. Coronation St. (UKTV) — 71,000
  3. Dora the Explorer (Nickelodeon) — 66,000
  4. Family Guy (Fox 8) — 65,000
  5. The Simpsons (Fox 8) — 60,000

Major Markets: Seven won overall and the main channels in all five metro markets. In Sydney, Nine was second and Ten third. In Brisbane, Nine was second in the main channels. Everywhere Ten pushed Nine out of second and into third. Ten was helped by a strong performance of Eleven, which doubled episodes of programs such as The Simpsons and Futurama and won all five metro markets. Nine still leads Seven and Ten in Sydney. Seven leads Nine and Ten in Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. In Perth its Ten second and Nine third.

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

Glenn Dyer’s comments: Nine’s attempt to neuter this strong night for Seven failed. Nine debuted Charlie’s Angels, which failed to make a decent impression on viewers. It had the second episode of Two and a Half Men, down sharply on last week, but still did well, while The Joy Of Sets‘ second episode sank like a stone as did the returning Survivor: South Pacific series.

So two flops and the much-hyped Charlie’s Angels on the verge of  flop status. Nine finished third nationally.

The five top programs nationally were:

  1. The X Factor — 2.047 million
  2. Seven News — 1.776 million
  3. Two and a Half Men — 1.660 million
  4. Home and Away — 1.659 million
  5. Today Tonight — 1.578 million

Two and a Half Men averaged 3.002 million viewers for the first episode last week, so the fall is 1.342 million nationally.

Charlie’s Angeles had 1.178 million viewers nationally (about 300,000 in regional areas), which is probably just enough to keep it in the schedule for a while longer. The problem for most programs is the first audience is usually the best, so if that’s the case, Charlie’s Angels won’t improve next week.

Pay TV on Monday night: Rove’s second show on Fox 8 is an example of the second show syndrome: Rover averaged 74,000 viewers on Monday night, down sharply from the 134,000 for his debut the week before. Rove’s program is on until the end of the year, but Foxtel would love the audience to be about 100,000 an episode instead of about 74,000.

TONIGHT: The ABC has Poh’s Kitchen On The Road, Spicks & Specks, Gruen Planet and then At Home With Julia. Seven has The X Factor and World’s Strictest Parents. Nine has CSI returning at 8.30 then Prime Suspect (the US remake that hardly set the world on fire in the US in its debut last Thursday). Ten has Glee and then a fresh episode of Hawaii Five-O.

That first episode of the new series of Hawaii Five-O averaged 11.1 million viewers on CBS on Monday night in the US, which was certainly better than the premiere of Terra Nova on Fox, which averaged 9 million for the two-hour episode (it held viewers, though, according to reports). Ten starts Terra Nova in Australia next Sunday night. Two and a Half Men won the night with 20 million viewers for the first standalone episode involving Ashton Kutcher. That’s down 8.7 million from its return episode a week earlier.

Source: OzTAM, TV Networks reports