Greedy Nine might have won the night thanks to its hogging of the Test cricket and the State of Origin, but both disappointed. The Origin lead up near hour bored us again, as did the 40 minutes of lead up to the start of the Test. The same yellers and yakkers from Australia were there. The ABC digital radio coverage was completely out of synch with the vision on Nine (when I watched the Test. When I was on the Origin embarrassment and then the Tour de France, the difference wasn’t noticeable). For Nine it was a wasted night in terms of money spent to get those ratings. Yes, it wrote good ad revenues for both, but Origin would have easily won the night on its own. Why didn’t the first Ashes Test start tonight?

Origin managed 3.307 million national viewers, with 2.207 million in the metros and 1.100 million in the regions. All three were well down on deciding games and previous records and given the state of the game after around 20 minutes or so,  quite a few viewers stayed with the one-sided match. In Sydney there was a noticeable turnoff by around 9.15pm with more than 200,000 viewers deserting Nine. In Brisbane and Melbourne (the other major metro markets) the audiences help up. The Sydney audience averaged 847,000 – the record (for Game 1 of 2014) was 1.237million. Brisbane’s audience last night of 845,000 was the second highest ever, just behind the 857,000 for Game 1 last year. Last night’s national audience of just over 3.3 million was 890,000 short of the all time record of 4.193 million for Game 2 last year.

Nine’s greed split its audience and the number of viewers for the Origin game was hundreds of thousands less because of that. Still, if they were Blues supporters they didn’t miss much. The test was on Nine’s Gem digital channel and in Perth, where the game started around 6.15pm and was the highest rating channel last night. The first session of the test had 925,000 viewers, the second session had 658,000 and the final session (up top the end of ratings at 2 am) had 193,000

Network channel share:

  1. Nine (46.7%)
  2. Seven (19.2%)
  3. Ten (16.2%)
  4. ABC (12.4%)
  5. SBS (5.4%)

Network main channels:

  1. Nine (32.0%)
  2. Seven (13.8%)
  3. Ten (11.9%)
  4. ABC (8.7%)
  5. SBS ONE (4.9%)

Top digital channels: 

  1. Gem (12.1%)
  2. 7TWO (3.1%)
  3. Gem (2.7%)
  4. Eleven (2.6%)
  5. ABC 2, 7mate (2.3%)

Top 10 national programs:

  1. Game 3, State of Origin (Nine) — 3.307 million
  2. Game 3, State of Origin Pre-Match (Nine) — 2.114 million
  3. Nine News — 1.707 million
  4.  Game 3, State of Origin Post-Match (Nine) — 1.697 million
  5.  Seven News — 1.335million
  6. Masterchef Australia (Ten)– 1.294 million
  7. Home and Away (Seven) — 1.218 million
  8. 7pm ABC 1 News — 1.186 million
  9. Border Security (Seven) — 1.155 million
  10. Nine News 6.30 — 1.107 million

Top metro programs:

  1. Game 3, State of Origin (Nine) — 2.207 million
  2. Game 3, State of Origin Pre-Match (Nine) — 1.403 million
  3. Nine News — 1.215 million
  4. Game 3, State of Origin Post-Match (Nine) — 1.168 million
  5. Nine News 6.30 — 1.107 million
  6. Seven News — 1.037 million

Losers: Sports fans who wanted to watch both the Test cricket and the State of Origin. Nine’s greed prevented that, aided and abetted by Cricket Australia and the NRL. Greedy fools all of them. And why did the actual play in the Test and the Origin (BlueWash) take so long to get underway, again? Take Origin off Nine and give it to another network (sell it rather) or do it on rotation among the major FTA networks covering the sport like the NFL does with the Super Bowl (sharing it between CBS, NBC and Fox).Metro news and current affairs:

  1. Nine News — 1.215 million
  2. Nine News 6.30 — 1.107 million
  3. Seven News — 1.037 million
  4. Seven News/ Today Tonight — 966,000
  5. A Current Affair (Nine) – 920,000
  6. ABC News – 808,000
  7. Ten Eyewitness News — 664,000
  8. The Project 7pm (Ten) — 643,000
  9. 7.30 (ABC) — 528,000
  10. The Project 6.30pm (Ten) — 464,000

Morning TV:

  1. Sunrise (Seven) – 287,000
  2. Today (Nine) – 278,000
  3. The Morning Show (Seven) — 141,000
  4. News Breakfast (ABC  86,000 + 52,000 on News 24) — 141,000
  5. Mornings (Nine) — 139,000
  6. Studio 1o (Ten) — 62,000

Top five pay TV channels:

  1. Fox8 (2.1%)
  2. LifeStyle (2.0%)
  3. Foxtel Movie Premiere (1.6%)
  4. UKTV (1.5%)
  5. 111 Greats, Foxtel Movies (1.4%)

Top five pay TV programs:

  1. The Walking Dead (FX) – 147,000
  2. Family Guy (Fox) – 102,000
  3. The Simpsons (Fox) – 82,000
  4. Cricket: 2nd Test, India v Aust (Fox Sports 1) – 82,000
  5. Futurama (Fox) – 78,000

*Data © OzTAM Pty Limited 2015. The data may not be reproduced, published or communicated (electronically or in hard copy) in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of OzTAM. (All shares on the basis of combined overnight 6pm to midnight all people.) and network reports.