Once again hyperbole has tripped up
the Nine Network. Twenty four hours after issuing a gloating press release that
highlighted Seven’s very poor result on Sunday night,
Nine lost Monday night to Seven on a night where the key influence was the last
day’s telecast of the Ashes test on SBS.

Nine said yesterday that Seven, “devastated
by the competition, recording its worst Sunday night share nationally and in
Sydney so far
this year”.

While not as bad, Nine’s plunge from
a leading 29.2% share on Sunday night to a losing 22.2% on Monday night must
have been pretty galling, proving once again it’s hard to program a TV Network
with your foot in your mouth. Nine’s sledging of Seven on Monday
seemed to have more to do with the start of the highly expensive C7 Federal
Court case in Sydney. While Seven
did fall to a low of 16.8%, its recovery to a winning 24.4% was greater than
Nine’s plunge.

Without the cricket on SBS, which
attracted a 21% share and third place in front of a weak Ten (18.5%), Seven’s
share would have been bigger (and so would have Nine’s ) but the loss would have
probably been bigger, seeing Seven had the top five programs last night and Nine
had the next four.

In
writing about Seven’s very poor effort on Sunday night, Nine spinners reached
for the eggbeater and said:

“60
Minutes was the country’s most watched show with 1.79 million viewers
haunted by Richard Carleton’s coverage of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath.
Behind the Scenes of Seven’s Dancing with
the Stars [sic] stumbled and fell with viewers.
It
was smashed by the fancy footwork of Backyard Blitz, whose audience of 1.728
million almost doubled that of Seven’s latest Sunday night
failure.”

So
what can we write about Nine on Monday night: that more people get their news
from Seven than Nine? Or Home
and Away again out tempts Temptation with viewers, or The Great Outdoors is a
better look than Nine’s The Alice?

The
possibilities are endless but tonight I know that Nine
will be pummelled by Dancing With The Stars from 7.30
pm to 9.30 pm, and Nine knows there’s nothing it can do. Next week it wheels
that tired American cliché called Survivor into the breach to try and stop the
rot.