Nine wins non-ratings ratings. Nine
won last week’s ratings thanks in part to the AFL and NRL on Thursday and Friday
nights and a solid effort earlier in the week. But the main reason was the first week of non-ratings and the way that Seven,
in particular, rested all of its top programs, preferring to run dead with
repeats or highlights packages cobbled together and presented as new
material. It’s
not that Nine and Ten didn’t go down this route: they did, but it had less of an impact.
Ten continued to show new eps of The Biggest Loser and ran the second
episode of Thank God You’re Here, while Nine
used a new ep of CSI. However Seven
News and Today Tonight maintained the pressure on Nine News and A
Current Affair
for another week. Nine won the week – with a share of 28.5% to Seven
with 27.2% and Ten with 22.8%, the ABC with 16.1% and SBS with 5.5% –
in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide but lost Perth to Seven.
Nine won Thursday, Saturday and Sunday (by a mile) but just lost Friday
night to Seven. – Glenn Dyer

Last night’s TV
ratings

The Winners Nine, as Seven continued with the Ten Commandments and
didn’t set the bush on fire, nor the ratings meters across the country last
night. Nine won with a repeat of Cold Case as the most watched program (1.710
million). It shows what sort of mood viewers were in. Thirteen programs touched
or surpassed a million viewers, including Temptation (1.005 million) and the
sudsy and very cheesy Hotel Babylon (1.070 million), which turned the tables on
Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope on the ABC in the same timeslot
(887,000). Seven News, though, was second after Cold Case (1.650
million), then Today Tonight (1.625 million), then a repeat of 20 to 1 (1.577
million… Now is that Bud Newton, or Bert Tingwell? The hosts are very
interchangeable). Nine’s A Current Affair was next with 1.551 million, then Nine
News (1.520 million), then The Biggest Loser (elimination ep) on Ten with 1.481
million, just ahead of Home and Away (1.301 million), The Great Outdoors (1.172
million) and then Hotel Babylon.
The Losers Losers? Not Bert – his highest audience so far with
679,000 viewers and that helped Nine News and ACA in Sydney and Melbourne. Deal or No Deal also saw its audience rise, to more than a million viewers,
1.067 million. Normally that should have meant big figures for Seven news
and Today Tonight and wins in Sydney and or Melbourne. Seven’s Ten Commandments,
the second part, no Desperate Housewives with just 977,000 people – real Easter
viewing and treated as such by viewers who preferred the repeat of Cold Case and
the babble of Hotel Babylon.
News & CA Seven News and Today Tonight may have won nationally,
but that was due entirely to big audiences in Adelaide and Perth and big winning
margins over Nine. Nine News and ACA won in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, the
first time they have done that for a while. The lead-ins should have favoured
Seven but didn’t. That will set the folk at both networks a’wondering and a
number crunching. ACA increased the news audiences in Sydney and Melbourne but
not in Brisbane. The 7pm ABC news averaged 1.063 million, still more than
Temptation which was a solid fourth. All four programs in the 7pm timeslot last
night had more than a million viewers. The Ten news at 5pm (812,000) didn’t get
much of a lift from the AFL Game (Collingwood v. the Kangaroos with 794,000).
It’s been higher on Monday evenings in the past month. Four Corners (645,000)
sagged with the second part of its AWB story while Media Watch, with 741,000
again, got a bit of a lift from viewers looking for Enough
Rope.
The Stats Nine with 31.9% (27.4%) from Seven with 26.8% (26.7%)
Ten with 29.3% (22.5%), the ABC with 16.1%(17.1%) and SBS with 5.9% (5.7%). Nine
won Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide and finished second in Perth behind
Seven, which is sort of normal.
Glenn Dyer’s comments Nine won with a clever mix but due to the boost the
150,000 or so more viewers watching Bert Newton gave to the news and ACA in
Sydney and Melbourne in particular. Seven lifted its share by the smallest of
margins but will be smug that they did it after losing in the East Coast between 6pm and 7pm and then running the Ten Commandments, a program that was a
potboiler in every sense of the world and made Hotel Babylon look like a top
notch drama, which it isn’t. Viewers were obviously in a mood to veg out and just
gaze at their sets. Of interest tonight is how the Seven-Nine News and Current
Affairs battle goes between 6pm and 7pm and whether Bert Newton manages to
hold on to some of last night’s big audience. If that happens, then the dynamics
of that 6pm war of attrition might just be
changing