It was another Monday night’s ratings the Nine Network won’t want to remember.
From 7pm to 10:30pm Nine ran third or fourth across the network and in most
markets, beaten by Seven, Ten and the ABC – an almost unheard-of performance
for the network.

Only the relatively strong performances of Nine News, A Current Affair and Frasier, all with audiences above a million viewers, helped the Network reach second
place nationally. Seven won Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and Nine finished
second, but in Adelaide for the second week in a row Nine finished third behind
Seven and Ten and in Perth, fourth for the second Monday in a row. The ABC
actually finished second in Perth in a very strong performance.

Not even Seven resting Desperate Housewives last night for the ‘non-official’ Easter ratings break could help Nine or Ten
as the ABC proved to be the most competitive channel for most of the night. The
ABC had four programs with more than a million viewers, Nine only had three.
Seven also had four – the top four – the News, a repeat of The Great Outdoors, Today Tonight and Home and Away.

Seven won nationally, with a 28.7% share to Nine well back on 22.9%, Ten on
21.0%, the ABC strong on 20.3% and SBS on a high 7.1% because of the program Mythbusters which attracted 609,000 viewers.

Seven News was the most watched program on the night, thanks to the scoop on
Tony Abbott’s son who wasn’t. That wasn’t promoted ahead of the news at 6pm,
but saw 1.361 million people watch with Seven winning in Sydney again. That
helped Today Tonight to a national win, although it had a rare loss in Sydney to Ray Martin and A Current Affair.

The ABC had another very strong Monday night. The 7pm News finished 9th with
1.109 million, the 7.30 Report had 1.025 million, Four Corners, 1.037 million (with a buy-in from the UK called Global Dimming). Media Watch had its highest audience for months with 953,000 and Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope averaged 948,000.