Three times the news at BusinessDay? Wow, BusinessDay.com.au had so much coverage of BHP’s bid for Rio Tinto yesterday … oh no, wait, they just have three websites with the same article (click below for a larger image).

Last night’s TV ratings
The Winners:  Ten’s So You Think You Can Dance Australia was tops with 1.628 million. Seven News was next with 1.468 million, followed by  Home And Away (1.251 million), Today Tonight  (1.238 million), the 7pm ABC News (1.193 million), the repeat of A Touch Of Frost on Seven at 8.30pm (1.124 million), Nine News (1.117 million). The Biggest Loser (1.093 million), the return of Spicks And Specks  to the ABC at 8.30pm (1.022 million) and The Shape Of Things To Come  (1.006 million).

The Losers: A bad night for Nine. The Chopping Block with only 718,000. Bye, bye. Two And A Half Men at 7pm with 768,000. Why is it still there with those numbers? Nine’s movie, Catch Me If You Can, 571,000 from 8.30pm. A Current Affair, 995,000. Under the million mark this close to ratings with competition levels rising…hmmm. The New Inventors on the ABC at 8pm, 737,000. For all the on air promotion, that was a bit low.

News & CA: Seven News again won nationally and in every market but Brisbane, as did Today Tonight. Both won Melbourne for a change. Seven beat Nine News by 130,000 in Sydney as Nine slipped to 283,000! The 7pm ABC News ran second in Sydney and Melbourne in front of Nine. Ten News averaged 869,000; Late News/Sports Tonight, 297,000. The 7.30 Report averaged 825,000; Lateline, 238,000; Lateline Business, 129,000. SBS News, 198,000 at 6.30pm; 190,000 at 9.30pm. Nightline, 185,000. 7am Sunrise up to 430,000; 7am Today back to 290,000, but still on the up this year so far.

The Stats: Seven won with 29.9% from Ten with 28.5%, Nine with 19.6%, the ABC with 17.5% and SBS with 4.4%. Seven won Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. Ten won Melbourne. Ten still leads the week 27.8% from Seven with 27.4% and Nine on 23.5%. In regional areas, Prime/7Qld won with 31.8% from Southern Cross (Ten) with 25.2%, WIN/Prime with 22.2%, the ABC with 16.0% and SBS with 4.8%.

Glenn Dyer’s comments: TV audiences once again showed why they are the most important people in the TV industry. The poor reception for Nine’s new The Chopping Block is a salutary lesson to all TV managements about serving up programs hyped beyond their capacity to entertain. It has stopped Nine in its tracks, forced a re-think of the entire 2008 strategy and increased pressure on David Gyngell and his programmer, Michael Healy, to lift their game. The question now is, do you chop it or try to resurrect it? Nine running Two And A Half Men at 7pm isn’t helping. Home And Away, The Biggest Loser and the ABC News are killing it. It should have bought the BBC soap Out of The Blue and run it at 7pm simply to split the audience that Ten and Seven have (and I know it won’t be available for a while), or got the remake of The Young Doctors up quickly and dropped it in there, or bought Temptation back (at least it gets a million viewers).

Source: OzTAM, TV Network reports