Q&A: Rudd v Jones, lurve in, a meeting of minds, Judith Brett the historian and Laura Tingle the AFR’s chief political writer. Q&A should have slotted Rudd and Jones together and let them rave. It had 575,000 metro viewers and 812,000 nationally. Will we have to put up with Rudd appearing for book two of his autobiography?

But it was Seven’s night with The Block out of Nine’s line up and Seven introducing us to something called The Wall which is a format that has done very well in the US for NBC (certainly in generating lots of publicity about the amounts of money being given away, which is what pleases the hearts of worried TV network executives). It is not so blatant a cash give away or bribe to watch that Seven’s Sunrise and Nine’s Today engage in every morning and it’s more crass than The Chase Australia and The Chase UK original, in that more is left to chance with the oddly coloured balls dropping through what looks like a slot/pinball machine. Viewers liked it but it couldn’t crack a million metro viewers — came close with 974,000 (and with stronger support in the regions, 1.546 million nationally which means it is a first up success). The question is how many will return tonight? But for Seven it was the first really dominant night since Australian Ninja Warrior started on Nine in early July and ruined the next four months of Seven’s programming — helped by The Block. Perhaps Seven’s share price will now start rising.

Nine’s new program, Family Food Fight, faded and in the end was weak — a rip off of Masterchef and MKR and viewers agreed — 832,000 national and 614,000 metro viewers. Seven’s heavily promoted UK series Liar also faded — half a million metro viewers at best (and 765,000 nationally). How many will come back for the next episode? And Seven News had another win in Sydney at 6 pm with 259,000 to 250,000 viewers — what was occasional is now becoming weekly.

In regional markets The Wall was tops with 572,000, Seven News was second with 570,000, Seven News/TT was third with 491,000, Home and Away was 4th with 438,000 and the 5.30pm part of The Chase Australia averaged 388,000 for fifth. — Read the rest on the Crikey website