The Nine Network is edging closer to its rival Seven, with Super Nanny USA taking on those Desperate Housewives.
After the Seven Network’s narrowest Monday night win so far this
ratings season, Nine’s optimistic execs might well be asking themselves
how close they can get…

Seven won last night with a national audience share of 31.2%, down from
31.7% the previous Monday night. Nine was second with 30.5%, up from
29.3% the week before, so it’s narrowing the gap. Ten was off the pace
on 17.0%, beaten down as The X-Factor continued to slide. The ABC was also lower on 14.9%, while SBS finished with 6.4%, thanks again to the success of Mythbusters.

Desperate Housewives was the most watched program last night with 2.159 million people, but Super Nanny has closed to within 350,000 or so people, the closest any competing program has got on Mondays. Super Nanny’s
1.827 million audience was pretty good, but not good enough given that
Seven’s supremacy in the news and current affairs hour between 6pm and
7pm continued last night.

Today Tonight was the third most watched show with a huge 1.646 million viewers and easily beat Nine’s floundering A Current Affair which finished 10th and 375,000 viewers behind. Seven News finished 5th, two spots and 92,000 people ahead of Nine News. Eddie McGuire’s Who Wants To be A Millionaire again did well with the exploitation of a battler.

For Ten’s X-Factor, the elimination episode this week sank to 27th spot and only 647,000 people, easily beaten by the ABC’s 7.30 Report and Australian Story, while Super Nanny and Seven’s The Great Outdoors were well out in front in the 7.30pm to 8.30pm timeslot.

Ten’s most popular program was Neighbours at 6.30pm with 1.034 million people. It was downhill from them on, with Law & Order
at 8.30pm the only other program over a million viewers for the
network. Millionaire’s audience rose to 1.44 million, still more than
700,000 behind Desperate Housewives, but that’s a lot better than being behind by more than a million viewers as it was a few weeks ago.

The Sydney Daily Telegraph reported today that Eddie is thinking
of buying a ‘pad’ in Sydney. Does Nine have plans for Eddie to be in
Sydney more frequently? After all, the Commonwealth Games, Collingwood
and Millionaire are all in Melbourne, and taking up most of his time.