The official ratings battle has recessed for the bun and egg fest, and we saw the result for TV viewers last night as the Nine Network started 10 days or so of treating viewers to a sticky mess of repeats and rubbish (such as Two and A Half Men). The repeats festival worsens next week with Victorian and Queensland schools on a break and viewing levels expected to be lower than normal. Nine went to the mattresses early last night, imposing Easter with the Australian Women’s Weekly on us viewers at 6.30pm (903,000 national/ 606,000 metro/ 300,000 regional).

But Seven gave us a near-normal line-up of fresh Sunday Night, also very solid (1.918 million national/ 1.26 million metro/ 658,000 regional and number one on the night across the country), fresh episodes of The Force and Downton Abbey ( 1.713 million national/ 1.153 million metro/ 560,000 regional) and a repeat of Border Security. ABC1 finished the David Attenborough special on the Galapagos and returned Call The Midwife (1.024 million national/ 685,000 metro/ 339,000 regional). Ten had repeats of The Simpsons and Modern Family, but gave us fresh episodes of Bondi Rescue, The Biggest Loser (1.365 million national/ 957,000 metro/ 408,000 regional and signs of renewed life) and Elementary (1.150 million national/ 866,000 metro/ 866,000 regional), as well as The Graham Norton Show.

With last week’s political events still fresh in minds, the ABC’s Insiders did very well yesterday morning for ABC1, with an easy win over the returning Bolt Report, while Ten’s News Ltd-produced bit of tosh, Meet The Press, flopped back to a derisory morning figure.

Last week: Seven won in metro and regional areas and has won the first round of 2013 ratings. Now for the Easter break, which will be dominated by repeats and more repeats, sport and more sport as the AFL season cranks up, the odd horse race, a bit of soccer, a bit of super rugby and lots of NRL. And My Kitchen Rules which returns a week tonight. Black Caviar’s run on Friday night in the half-time break of the first AFL game of the year saw made of the week’s top 20 programs, with 1.206 million watching the broadcast and a very tasty 1.26 million watching the actual race, according to Seven and Oztam data. She boosted the ratings for the  AFL match, which averaged 951,000 across the country on Seven and 7mate, and peaked at 1.359 million.

Network share:

  1. Seven (30.5%)
  2. Nine (24.6%)
  3. Ten (24.4%)
  4. ABC (15.8%)
  5. SBS (4.7%)

Main channels: 

  1.  Seven (25.2%)
  2. Nine (16.7%)
  3. Ten (15.4%)
  4. ABC1 (12.6%)
  5. SBS ONE (3.8%)

Top 5 digital channels:

  1. ONE (6.8%)
  2. GO (4.8%)
  3. 7TWO (3.4%)
  4. Gem (3.1%)
  5. Eleven (2.2%)

Top 10 national programs:

  1. Sunday Night (Seven) – 1.918 million.
  2. Nine News — 1.781 million
  3. Seven News – 1.738 million
  4. Downton Abbey (Seven)  — 1.713 million
  5. The Force (Seven) — 1.581 million.
  6. Border Security (Seven) — 1.458 million
  7. The Biggest Loser (Ten) — 1.365 million
  8. David Attenborough’s Galapagos (ABC1) — 1.341 million
  9. 60 Minutes (Nine) — 1.340 million
  10. The Making of Galapagos (ABC1) — 1.237 million

Top Metro programs:

  1. Sunday Night (Seven) — 1.260 million
  2. Seven News 1.211 million
  3. Nine News — 1.197 million
  4. Downton Abbey (Seven) — 1.153 million
  5. The Force (Seven) — 1.057 million

Metro/regional: Led by Sunday Night and Downton Abbey, Seven won easily in all metro and regional markets. Thanks to the solid figures for ONE’s Grand Prix broadcast, Ten actually won the “all people” demographic in Adelaide, beating Seven and finished second in Perth and Melbourne. But in the main channels it was third behind the very weak Nine, which ran dead.

Losers: Nine’s regular viewers. They should have been watching better programming last nightMetro News and current affairs:

  1. Sunday Night  (Seven) – 1.260 million
  2. Seven News – 1.211 million
  3. Nine News  – 1.197 million
  4. 60 Minutes  (Nine) – 892,000 million
  5. ABC News – 759,000
  6. SBS ONE News — 165,000.

Metro morning TV:

  1. Weekend Sunrise (Seven) – 332,000
  2. Weekend Today (Nine) – 259,000
  3. Landline (ABC1) — 202,000.
  4. Insiders (ABC1) – 193,000 + 98,000 on News 24
  5. The Bolt Report (Ten) – 163,000
  6. Offsiders (ABC1) — 139,000
  7. Inside Business (ABC1) — 132,000
  8. Meet The Press repeat (Ten) — 121,000
  9. Meet the Press (Ten) — 83,000.

Top five pay TV channels:

  1. Fox  Sports 28– 5.9%
  2. Fox Sports 2  – 4.0%
  3. Fox 8 – 2.4%
  4. TV1 — 2.3%
  5. LifeStyle – 1.6%

Top five pay TV programs:

  1. NRL: Cronulla v Auckland (Fox Sports 1) – 225,000
  2. NRL: Canberra v St George (Fox Sports 1) – 219,000
  3. Cricket: fourth Test, India v Australia (Fox Sports 2) – 128,000
  4. Super Rugby: NSW v Auckland (Fox Sports 1) — 120,000
  5. Cricket: fourth Test, India v Australia (Fox Sports 2) – 114,000

Tonight: News and current affairs on ABC1. Seven has that tired old idea, The Great Easter Feast at 8pm (easy, Easter eggs and buns). It has a fresh Revenge at 8.30pm (how will it go without My Kitchen Rules to help boost its audience?). Nine has repeats of Big Bang Theory and gives us a fresh episodes of the unmentionably bad Two and A Half Men, and then repeats a movie. Ten has The Biggest Loser, Can of Worms and a repeat of Hawaii Five-0 (which is curious because no one is watching the fresh episodes anyway).

*Data © OzTAM Pty Limited 2013. The data may not be reproduced, published or communicated (electronically or in hard copy) in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of OzTAM. (All shares on the basis of combined overnight 6pm to midnight all people.)