A close night  – Seven claims an overall win, Nine a win in the metro main channels. Ten was pushed back to 4th with the first of its two finals for Celebrity, bad news for the network. This series of Celebrity has not set the world on fire and while it hasn’t tanked, it should have really done better than a national audience of 1.18 million for the second last program of this series last night. Perhaps it will kick close to 1.3 million or 1.4 million with tonight’s final?

Married at First Sight was the Number 1 program last night: nationally with 1.61 million, 1.16 million in the metros and second in the regions on 450,000. My Kitchen Rules slid to 4th nationally with 1.37 million. Vera again did well for the ABC with 1.18 million viewers.

In regional markets Seven news was tops with 492,000 people, followed by Married with 450,000, MKR was third on 409,000, Sunday Night was fourth with 392,000 and Vera was fifth with 389,000.

60 Minutes on Nine (908,000 nationally), has had a very weak start to the year and it continues to fall behind Seven’s Sunday Night (1.25 million). Married at First Sight with its appeal to younger demos is the wrong sort of lead in for 60 Minutes (it should do better behind The Block, for instance). Younger viewers don’t want to know about what 60 minutes covers.  However, the older demo tuning in to watch MKR on Seven are enjoying what’s on Sunday Night though, even as MKR’s audience shrinks.

Wasn’t it great to see the Fairfax Media Sundays yesterday waking up to the fact that Insiders on the ABC is doing so well? Regular readers of Crikey’s Monday ratings would have realised that a year or more ago. Yesterday was no different – a total of 609,000 nationally, with some boost from the WA election results, the coverage of which ended late on Saturday night. This was 78,000 more than a week ago when Pauline Hanson put one foot in her mouth and the other behind her left ear and made a right goose of herself and then watched the One Nation vote promptly drop from around 8% in the polls to 4.7% on Saturday in the real poll. 

And, by the way, another top program from Landline about China beef and the home growing movement with verge gardens outside their homes.

Network channel share:

  1. Seven (30.3%)
  2. Nine (29.5%)
  3. ABC (17.5%)
  4. Ten (17.0%)
  5. SBS (5.5%)

Network main channels:

  1. Nine (21.3%)
  2. Seven (21.0%)
  3. ABC (13.8%)
  4. Ten (12.6%)
  5. SBS ONE (4.0%)

Top 5 digital channels: 

  1. 7mate (4.1%)
  2. 7TWO (2.8%)
  3. GO, 9Life (2.7%)
  4. Gem (2.6%)

Top 10 national programs:

  1. Married at First Sight (Nine)  — 1.61 million
  2. Seven News  — 1.48 million
  3. Nine/NBN News — 1.39 million
  4. MKR (Seven) — 1.37 million
  5. Sunday Night (Seven)  —1.25 million
  6. Vera (ABC) — 1.18 million
  7. I’m a Celebrity – Elimination (Ten) — 1.17 million
  8. 7pm ABC News —1.09 million
  9. Grand Designs (ABC) — 1.05 million
  10. I’m A Celebrity – Finale Part 1 (Ten) — 1.02 million

Top metro programs:

  1. Married at First Sight (Nine) —1.16 million

Losers: Seven and MKR, 60 Minutes on Nine.

Metro news and current affairs:

  1. Nine News — 997,00
  2. Seven News  — 996,000
  3. Sunday Night (Seven)  — 858,000
  4. 7pm ABC News —715,000
  5. 60 Minutes (Nine) — 662,000
  6. Ten Eyewitness News — 344,000
  7. SBS World News — 143,000

Morning TV:

  1. Insiders (ABC, 399,000, 210,000 on News 24) — 609,000
  2. Landline (ABC) — 462,000
  3. Weekend Sunrise (Seven) — 455,000
  4. Weekend Today (Nine) — 381,000
  5. Offsiders (ABC) — 270,000

Top five pay TV programs:

  1. NRL: St George v Parramatta (Fox League) — 274,000
  2. NRL: Wests v Penrith (Fox League) — 228,000
  3. NRL: Sunday Ticket (Fox League) — 183,000
  4. AFL: Pre-season Geelong v Essendon (Fox Footy) — 116,000
  5. AFL: Port Adelaide v Hawthorn (Fox Footy) — 97,000