It’s another win to the Seven Network in the first week of ratings for
the second survey period of the year. This continues the trend
from the first survey – won by Seven – but this second win was helped
by Nine’s decision to show the Papal funeral on Friday. In fact the
Papal funeral and the wedding of Charles and Camilla played no small
part in the eventual outcome, with the Nine Network’s chances of
winning the week damaged by its decision to broadcast several hours of
the event on late Friday afternoon and the into the early evening.

Nine’s Friday night ratings took a bad knock as viewers switched from the Pope to Seven News (even Deal or No Deal ), Today Tonight and Home and Away. That forced Nine to postpone the premiere of Our Place ,
its new lifestyle program on Friday evening at 7:30pm. It’s down to
kick-off this weekend. There won’t be any telecasting of the funeral of
Prince Rainier of Monaco this Friday in Australia!

Seven’s decision to ignore the Pope and go for the Charles and Camilla
festivities paid off. Viewers preferred the Seven version of the
wedding Saturday night to Nine’s by a clear margin of 142,000 viewers.
An average 750,000 people watched the Pope’s funeral on Nine and
509,000 on the ABC.

Seven won Friday night with a good share of 32% to Nine’s 29.5%
(boosted by the NRL and AFL games after the Pope) with Ten on 17.5% and
the ABC on 15.4% (weighted down by the funeral broadcast) with SBS on
5.6%.

On Saturday night, Seven and Nine both trotted out broadcasts of the
funeral, while Ten did well without a wedding or a funeral in its
schedule, but it was helped by the AFL game on Saturday night. Ten
ended up drawing Saturday night with Seven, 26.2% each, leaving Nine
back on 25.1%, the ABC on 17.7% and SBS on 4.7%.

Together, the performance on Friday and Saturday nights saw Seven win
narrowly over Nine for the full week, 29.6% to 28.7%, with Ten on
21.0%, the ABC on 15.8% and SBS on 4.9%.

On Sunday night it was a clear win to Nine (32.9%) from Seven (22.1%),
but Ten (19.5%) was beaten by the ABC (21.7%) with SBS on 3.8%.

The ABC had two top ten finishers in the 7pm News and Krakatoa, but Battlefield Detectives was back in 11th place. Nine had the top four programs, the Nine News (wedding coverage), 60 Minutes, CSI and Backyard Blitz. Seven had two, the 6pm News and My Restaurant Rules, but Ten struggled. Law and Order: Criminal Intent was 12th, the X-Factor recovered to around 906,000 viewers, and then it all fell away.

The AFL Swans-Lions game did well on Saturday night for Ten
in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth and sort of in Brisbane, but it bombed
in Sydney. A mere 139,000 people watched – 200,000 down on Melbourne’s
audience and the smallest in the country for the game.