I was wrong! Yesterday I fearlessly forecast a Nine victory
on Monday night because of the Academy Awards and their popularity. Wrong, wrong, wrong, I apologise.

In my defence, all I can say that it took one of the most
interesting nights in Network Television for years to make me wrong.

The Nine Network did fall in a hole called the Academy
Awards which were boring and failed to boost Nine. They were just flat. Chris
Rock the host was ordinary and Australian viewers responded by deserting the
telecast in their hundreds of thousand.

Seven’s Desperate Housewives again blitzed them, Andrew
Denton’s Enough Rope’s TV exclusive with Princess Mary and hubbie blitzed them,
Seven’s Crossing Jordan did better.

For the time it was on (from around 9.30 pm to 10.10 pm)
Enough Rope was the second most watched show on TV last night with 1.539
million viewers, the best ever figures and a coup for Denton and his team

All this was ugly for Nine and a reminder to them that you
have to be entertaining to be watched. The Oscars were hardly that!

A full report is on the site here: https://uat.crikey.com.au/media/2005/03/01-0003.html