For the first time this week the collapse
in the Nine Network’s audience between 5pm and 6pm has caught up with
it, with Seven’s Today Tonight and News blitzing its bitter rival, thanks to the million people handed to them by Deal or No Deal at 5:30pm.

Last night’s Today Tonight was the most watched program nationally with 1.6 million people, followed by Seven News on 1.541 million. Nine News was 40,000 people away in third, with ACA back in eighth and more than 210,000 behind Today Tonight.

Temptation
again gathered a solid audience, but at 1.405 million people, it’s off
221,000 people from its Monday opening, a fall of almost 15%. Soon the
light will go on at Nine that it would have been the ideal program for
5:30pm, but at the moment it’s too expensive for that timeslot.

Despite the figures for Temptation, Nine will soon be looking to remove Frasier from 5:30pm and even swap it for the Price is Right. Frasier is just too slow and too cerebral for the viewers watching at 5:30pm.

Seven will be happy with the debut of Beyond Tomorrow (the new version of the venerable Beyond 2000) which attracted 1.401 million people, running second to Big Brother by 13,000 people.

For
all of Seven’s good performances last night, Nine won the night 27.8%
to 26.7%, because Wednesday is Ten’s best night and it finished within
a whisker of Seven on 26.5%. The ABC ended with 14.2% and SBS with 4.8%.