The Glenn Dyer breakdown: Nine, Seven and the ABC (on News 24) covered the Queensland and NSW storm, rain and flood stories well yesterday afternoon and into the evening. They were at it again this morning. Ten, as usual ignored following its rivals with wall-to-wall coverage.

This morning, however, ratings were delayed while the data for Brisbane and the Gold Coast was checked to make sure any impact on viewing from the storm and floods is known and doesn’t impact too much on the reported figures. As a result the figures were slow in coming and ended up two hours late.

When they came, Seven discovered that My Kitchen Rules started its 2013 campaign with more than 1.3 million metro viewers. That’s more than OK, but it’s looking a bit tired as a format, as is MasterChef Pro which averaged 892,000 metro viewers last night. That’s down a little from week one, but let’s see what happens tonight with no T20 on Nine and only MKR opposing it.

Nine gave us another T20 game that had its own rain drama and brought the confession from the network’s commentators that the game didn’t matter, it was a sort of “exhibition” outing for the teams and cricket (and Nine’s ratings). In other words, it wasn’t really necessary, except to try and fill the coffers of Cricket Australia and Nine. The game averaged more than 1.3 million metro viewers as well.

Nine won the night thanks to the drawn out tip and run game and its audience of more than 1.3 million people in metro markets. That outweighed the impact of MKR‘s first ep for the year, plus Home and Away. Nine’s win partially offset Seven’s crushing Sunday night victory off the back of the Men’s Open final. But it wasn’t a clean sweep for Nine. Seven won Brisbane as viewers there decided to stay with the network and its solid coverage last night of flood updates: Nine had the T20 coverage. Perth also saw Seven win with Nine second. In Perth the ABC again beat Ten into third. MasterChef isn’t a big fav in the west.

Tonight: Seven’s once-mighty Packed To The Rafters resumes at 8.30pm for 2013 in what is a make-or-break season. After being relieved from duty midway through its 2012 season, Seven has enough episodes to run this year without making any new shows. Old cast favourites have been brought back and as we saw over the tennis, Seven’s promo machined revved up to give Rafters as much as a push as it can.

If the revitalised cast and promos don’t succeed in lifting the program’s audiences, then Seven will look very closely at its future, even if the ratings for the new drama, A Place To Call Home don’t set the world on fire. Even the profitable Seven can’t afford two expensive dramas in the line-up over a full year. There’s a hint of desperation in the storyline and story telling. It could be the final year for the program, as many of the cast believe.

Rafters follows My Kitchen Rules and Parenthood returns after Rafters at around 9.45pm. On Nine, it’s a flood of repeats from 7pm to 10.30pm, broken only by another episode of World’s Scariest Flights at 7.30pm. Ten has MCP and then repeats of NCIS. The ABC has a repeat of New Tricks after a repeat of QI.

Seven won last week thanks to the tennis, which saw audiences urge towards the pointy end of the fortnight. Nationally, more than 2.33 million people watched the thrilling Federer-Murray semi-final on Friday night (just over 1.6 million in the five metro markets). Saturday night’s solid women’s final pulled 1.817 million nationally for the game (1.288 million in the metro markets) and more than 2.15 million nationally for the presentation (1.54 million in the metro markets).

Sunday night’s men’s final pulled more than 2.12 million metro viewers across the five markets. The presentation actually pulled more viewers than the actual game: 2.18 million v 2.12 million (the women’s final produced a similar outcome nationally). In fact Saturday night’s women’s final easily out rated the T20 game between Australia and Sri Lanka which had 870,000 metro and 1.344 million people nationally. Tennis has been more popular than the cricket in the past couple of weeks, although tennis audiences are down on last year when more than 2.4 million people watched across the five metro markets and well over 3.2 million nationally.

A national comparison with this year can’t be given as yet because the consolidated metro and regional figures for Sunday night are not yet available due to Oztam checking the impact of the floods and storm on regional numbers. Seven won Sunday night clearly with 49.5% from Nine on 19.8%, Ten was on 15.0%, the ABC was on 14.3% and SBS ended with 4.1%. Including pay TV the figures were Seven with 41.8%, Nine on 16.7%, Ten on 12.7%, the ABC with 9.8%, SBS with .4% and pay Tv with 13.4%.

The Metro Winners: 

  1. Nine News — 1.570 million.
  2. Seven News — 1.534 million
  3. My Kitchen Rules (Seven, 7.30pm) — 1.384 million.
  4. T20 game Aust. v Sri Lanka (Nine, 7.30pm) — 1.371 million.
  5. Today Tonight (Seven, 6.30pm) — 1.361 million.
  6. Home and Away (Seven, 7pm) — 1.070 million.

The Losers: Anyone who didn’t like cricket and cooking or wasn’t interested in the storm coverage in Queensland and NSW.Metro News & CA: Nine News was 45 minutes last night from 6pm, ACA ran from around 6.45pm to the around 7.30pm and the start of the T20 tip and run game. Seven again continued the fiction of a separate Today Tonight. The ACA figures are meaningless because of the different start finish time. Seven’s 4.30pm News had 571,000 viewers with its big flood coverage and Nine’s afternoon News had 541,000 (so more than a million viewers in the five metro markets watched both networks for the latest on the storm and rain and floods). News 24 had a solid night and a prime time share of 1.5% which is very high.

  1. Nine News (6pm) — 1.570 million.
  2. Seven News (6pm) — 1.534 million.
  3. Today Tonight (Seven, 6.30pm) — 1.361 million.
  4. A Current Affair (Nine, 6.30pm)– 918,000.
  5. ABC1 News (7pm) — 914,000.
  6. Ten News (5pm) — 767,000.
  7. 7.30 (ABC1, 7.30pm) — 651,000.
  8. The Project (Ten, 6.30pm) —  524,000.
  9. Ten Late News (10.30pm) — 204,000.
  10. Lateline (ABC1, 10.30pm) — 183,000.
  11. SBS News (6.30pm) — 144,000.
  12. The Drum (News 24, 10pm) — 69,000.
  13. SBS Late News (10.30pm) — 68,000.

In the morning: Sunrise and Today, plus News 24 continued their storm/rain/flood coverage after their scheduled ends. The Morning Show on Seven and Mornings on Nine were pre-empted by the flood coverage and over 800,000 people in the metro markets watched. Other programs later in the day were pre-empted on Seven and Nine.

  1. Sunrise (Seven, 7am) — 427,000.
  2. Today (Nine, 7am) — 346,000.
  3. The Morning Show (Seven, 9am) — 429,000.
  4. Mornings Summer (Nine, 9am) — 387,000.
  5. The Morning Show Extra (Seven, around 11 am) — 374,000.
  6. News Breakfast (ABC1, 7am) — 74,000 + 36,000 on News 24.

Metro FTA: Nine (three channels) won with a share of 35.5% from Seven (three) with 29.2%, Ten (three) was on 17.6%, the ABC (four) was on 14.3% and SBS (three) was on 3.3%. Seven leads the week with 39.2% from Nine on 27.8%, Ten on 16.3% and the ABC with 13.0%. Main Channels: Nine won with a share of 29.5% from Seven with 22.7%, Ten was on 11.5%, ABC1 was on 9.5% and SBS ONE ended with 2.6%. Seven leads the week with 33.4% from Nine on 21.5%, Ten on 10.9% and ABC1 with 9.1%.

Metro Digital: 7TWO was a narrow winner with 4.0% from GO with 3.9%, ONE with 3.1%, Eleven was on 3.0%, ABC2 was on 2.7%, 7mate was on 2.6%, Gem ended with 2.1%, News 24, 1.5%, ABC 3 and SBS TWO were on 0.7% each and NITV finished with 0.1%. The 11 digital channels had an FTA share last night of 24.4%, which was a bit low. GO leads the week after its win on Sunday night, with 3.9% from 7TWO on 3.3%.

Metro including Pay TV: Nine (three channels) won with a share of 30.1% from Seven (three) on 24.8%, Ten (three) was on 14.9%, the ABC (four) ended with 12.2% and SBS was on 2.8%. The 15 FTA channels had a viewing share last night of 87.1% (getting back to normal), with the 11 digital channels on a total of 19.8% (which is low) and the five main channels on a total of 67.3%. Pay TV’s share dipped to 13.9% for the 200 plus channels on Foxtel.

Major Metro Markets: Nine won Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, both overall and the main channels. Seven won Brisbane and Perth (both overall and the main channels). Ten was third everywhere bar in the main channels in Perth where ABC1 got home. In the digitals, 7TWO won Melbourne and shared Brisbane with GO (which won Sydney). 7TWO also won Adelaide. One won Perth. Seven leads the week everywhere after the good win on Sunday night with the men’s open tennis final.

(All shares on the basis of combined overnight 6pm to midnight All People)

Source: Oztam, TV Networks data