A better Tuesday night for the Nine Network. It was still beaten by Seven, thanks to Dancing with the Stars
and its 1.9 million viewers, but no third place in Sydney or the
ignominy of fourth in Perth behind the ABC, as there was on Monday
night. Nine won Brisbane because of their deep and abiding love of the CSI genre up north.

But the swimming barely surfaced for the half hour at 7pm, beaten by Home and Away on Seven and the 7pm ABC News. Even repeats of repeats of repeats of The Simpsons on Ten finished higher and with more viewers. Still the 896,000 people over half hour was 102,000 more than Monday night.

But
the real story of the night was the continuing battle for the 6pm to 7pm
news and current affairs hour. Nine beat Seven nationally by less than
30,000 viewers and that gap is narrowing. In Sydney though an 11,000
viewer win to Seven – 301,700 to only 289,500. The real damage was
again done to A Current Affair (with Ellen Fanning standing in for Ray Martin). Today Tonight finished 5th nationally with 1.428 million people, a massive 267,000 in front of ACA down in 11th spot with 1.061 million.

But
in Sydney ACA was watched by only 280,400 people, and 341,000 in
Melbourne. TT beat it easily by 70,000 and 65,000 respectively to set
up the big win.

Survivor: Palau remained above the magic million mark at 1.045 million for Nine, but was beaten by the new episode of The Simpsons on Ten nationally.

Dancing with the Stars
won the 7.30pm slot with 1.9 million viewers and with the 90-minute
episode finishing at 9pm, it effectively killed the first half of the CSI repeat (Nine is now trying to husband its stocks of new CSI episodes). CSI was second with 1.582 million and CSI: New York third with 1.544 million. Seven’s Home and Away and Today Tonight were next then All Saints, which ran from 9pm to 10pm with an average audience of 1.342 million and proved an effective blocker to Nine’s CSI double.

While Dancing with the Stars was the most watched program in Sydney and Melbourne, in Brisbane it was easily beaten by the two CSI programs.

Seven won the night with a 33.3% share to Nine’s 29.1%, 19.3% for Ten, the ABC on 14.2% and SBS on 4%.

Differing viewing habits in Sydney and Melbourne

There
are very obvious differences between the viewing habits of the Sydney
and Melbourne markets, but what are the differences based on and why do
they occur? Glenn Dyer explains on the Crikey website here.