Seven News wins Sydney at 6pm for the third night in a row last night — 245,000 to 242,000. A trend or a blip? Whatever it is, it is an interesting development after Nine has dominated 6pm in Sydney for more than a year.

Seven won total people, Nine won the main channels on a night. Family Food Fight on Nine continues to slip from its debut and Sisters on Ten also took a big hit — 522,000 national viewers, down from the 878,000 who tuned in for the two hour debut last week, when the second last episode of the Bachette was the lead in and handed on more viewers. With less than a month to go to the end of ratings, the networks are exhausting themselves and starting to finish series and drop in movie and other repeats (though the ABC has been doing that all year). 7.30 has seen its audience perk up as the citizenship story has evolved — it made the top 10 last night nationally at 10 with 895,000 viewers.

In regional markets Seven News was tops with 522,000, then Seven News/Today Tonight with 457,000, Home and Away was third with 438,000, Gruen had 359,000 for 4th and 5th was The Chase Australia’s 5.30pm bit with 325,000.

NB: for those readers confused by the Dr Casey’s Notebook reference yesterday, it was a deliberate conflation of Ben Casey and Dr Finlay’s Casebook without the accent.

Network channel share:

  1. Seven (27.3%)
  2. Nine (26.7%)
  3. ABC (20.9%)
  4. Ten (16.8%)
  5. SBS (8.3%)

Network main channels:

  1. Nine (18.9%)
  2. Seven (17.0%)
  3. ABC (15.0%)
  4. Ten (10.5%)
  5. SBS ONE (5.9%)

Top 5 digital channels: 

  1. 7TWO (4.7%)
  2. Eleven (3.9%)
  3. ABC 2 (3.7%)
  4. 7mate (3.6%)
  5. GO (3.5%)

Top 10 national programs:

  1. Seven News  — 1.462 million
  2. Seven News/Today Tonight — 1.367 million
  3. Nine/NBN News — 1.127 million
  4. Nine/NBN News 6.30 — 1.118 million
  5. Gruen (ABC) —1.175 million
  6. Home and Away (Seven) — 1.094 million
  7. 7pm ABC News — 996,000
  8. A Current Affair (Nine) — 963,000
  9. Hard Quiz (ABC) — 943,000
  10. 7.30 (ABC) — 895,000

Top metro programs: None over a million

Losers: Ten and viewers who didn’t return for Sisters.

Metro news and current affairs:

  1. Seven News — 940,000
  2. Seven News/Today Tonight — 916,000
  3. Nine News — 879,000
  4. Nine News (6.30pm) — 868,000
  5. A Current Affair (Nine) – 712,000
  6. 7pm ABC News —689,000
  7. 7.30 (ABC) — 618,000
  8. The Project 7pm (Ten) — 557,000
  9. Ten Eyewitness News — 423,000
  10. The Project 6.30pm (Ten) — 344,000

Morning (National) TV:

  1. Sunrise (Seven) —481,000
  2. Today (Nine) – 399,000
  3. News Breakfast (ABC, 173,000 + 92,000 on News 24) — 265,000
  4. The Morning Show (Seven) — 210,000
  5. Today Extra (Nine) — 147,000
  6. Studio 10 (Ten) — 110,000

Top five pay TV programs:

  1. Gogglebox Australia (LifeStyle) — 203,000
  2. Love It or List It Australia (LifeStyle) — 154,000
  3. Restoration Man (LifeStyle) — 57,000
  4. The Flash (Fox8) — 56,000
  5. NCIS (TVHITS) — 55,000