Nine News won again in total people, main channels and the key demos with The Block (1.39 million nationally) and True Story With Hamish and Andy (1.01 million) doing the job and more than offsetting a weakish night for the 6pm and 7pm news broadcasts. The other channels filled in the numbers.

But there will be more poor publicity for Nine’s struggling Today — for the first time in years its metro audience between 7-9am dipped under 300,000 (considered to be a key viewing level), all the way down to 199,000. It’s not much — the last time it was under 200,000 (according to preliminary Oztam data) was back on June 21, 2006 when it had an average of 187,000. Seven’s Sunrise averaged 268,000 yesterday — well under the 300,000 level that both shows regularly achieved a couple of years ago.

It will raise more speculation about the future of co-host Karl Stefanovic in particular (he seems to attract all the attention). Nine now has the difficult questions about how to tackle that and its other headache the AFL and NRL Footy Shows. The three programs are costly, but required, with hosting problems that are very tough to sort with the potential for a lot of bad publicity in any solution. 

In regional areas Seven News/Today Tonight was on top with 583,000, then Seven’s 6pm News with 572,000, The Block was third with 416,000 then Home and Away with 388,000 and The Chase Australia with 377,000.

Network channel share:

  1. Nine (31.0%)
  2. Seven (26.3%)
  3. Ten (18.8%)
  4. ABC (16.4%)
  5. SBS (7.4%)

Network main channels:

  1. Nine (22.2%)
  2. Seven (16.7%)
  3. Ten (12.9%)
  4. ABC (11.6%)
  5. SBS ONE (5.5%)

Top 5 digital channels: 

  1. 7mate (4.1%)
  2. GO (4.0%)
  3. 7TWO, ONE (3.6%)
  4. Gem (3.1%)

Top 10 national programs:

  1.  Seven News — 1.565 million
  2. Seven News/Today Tonight — 1.548 million
  3. The Block (Nine) — 1.399 million
  4. A Current Affair (Nine) — 1.168 million
  5.  Nine/NBN News  — 1.164 million
  6.  Nine/NBN News 6.30 — 1.159 million
  7. 7pm ABC News — 1.061 million
  8. Home and Away (Seven) — 1.031 million
  9. True Story With Hamish And Andy (Nine) — 1.013 million
  10. The Chase Australia 5.30pm (Seven) — 960,000

Top metro programs: weak night, none with a million or more viewers

Losers: Seven, Ten, Nine’s Today.

Metro news and current affairs:

  1. Seven News — 993,000
  2. Seven News/Today Tonight — 965,000
  3. Nine News 6.30 — 888,000
  4. A Current Affair (Nine) — 818,000
  5. Four Corners (ABC) — 735,000
  6. 7pm ABC News —733,000
  7. 7.30 (ABC) — 591,000
  8. The Project 7pm (Ten) — 514,000
  9. Foreign Correspondent (ABC) — 502,000
  10. Ten Eyewitness News — 370,000

Morning (National) TV:

  1. Sunrise (Seven) – 445,000
  2. Today (Nine) – 320,000
  3. News Breakfast (ABC, ABC News) — 256,000
  4. The Morning Show (Seven) — 207,000
  5. Mornings (Nine) — 145,000
  6. Studio 10 (Ten) — 80,000

Top five pay TV programs:

  1. AFL: 360 (Fox Footy) — 80,000
  2. Hones & Co (sky News) — 59,000
  3. Paul Murray Live (Sky News) — 58,000
  4. Back Page (Fox Sports) — 57,000
  5. The Bolt Report (Sky News) — 55,000