A big win for Seven last night. It has won the week already in both metro and regional markets. MKR was easily tops again, but Seven really won the night with its new crime doco series, Murder Uncovered. It was split into two one hour episodes from 9pm to 11 pm and it creamed the opposition. From 5.30pm to 11 pm, Seven won every time slot.

MKR had 1.76 million national viewers, while the 9pm first episode of Murder Uncovered was third nationally with 1.40 million, and the 10pm second instalment had 1.17 million national viewers, making it the 8th most watched program of the night. Over the two hours from 9pm to 11pm Uncovered was watched by an average of 1.28 million people.

That more than offset a solid night for Married at First Sight, which grabbed 1.34 million viewers. I’m A Celebrity managed just over 1.05 million and 11th spot nationally.

Ten started its hyped American series This Is Us at 8.30pm after I’m a Celebrity.  It averaged 824,000 nationally (which would be OK if that was in the metros, but it could only manage 576,000), but did hold a good chunk of Celebrity’s viewers. Give it a few more weeks to see if it builds or fades. 

It was more The Weakly than The Weekly for Charlie Pickering on the ABC at 9pm with 697,000 national viewers, 492,000 in the metro. With so much rich fodder for satire around the world, I say bring back Shaun Micallef quickly. At the moment, a lot of good material is going to waste.

Looking at Fox Sports, it is very, very odd that the Murdoch/News Corp-owned pay TV channel doesn’t seem to rate women’s AFL. Yes it is covering the games, but there’s none of the supporting programming that the male side of the code receives on weeknights – programs such as Fox Footy’s On The Couch or AFL: 360. For that matter, Seven could lift its game in programming a chat show (at least on 7mate) to boost interest. It has Game Day on Sundays for the men’s competition and that could be easily brought back to discuss what looks like being a big ratings hit. 

But Fox Sports’ non game day coverage looks very light on and a bit, well, gender specific, given the amount of time allocated each week to non game coverage of the AFL. Fox Footy is showing nothing but endless repeats of each weekend’s round until the next weekend, interspersed with more repeats. Fox Sports like to boast that they do sport better than anyone else. A comparison of the level of coverage of the men’s and women’s AFL competitions so far shows that to be a pretty hollow boast, but quite easily fixed.

Network channel share:

  1. Seven (35.1%)
  2. Nine (24.3%)
  3. Ten (18.2%)
  4. ABC (16.1%)
  5. SBS (6.3%)

Network main channels:

  1. Seven (27.5%)
  2. Nine (18.3%)
  3. Ten (13.4%)
  4. ABC (11.8%)
  5. SBS ONE (4.7%)

Top 5 digital channels: 

  1. 7TWO (2.9%)
  2. 7mate(2.7%)
  3. Eleven (2.5%)
  4. GO, ONE (2.3%)

Top 10 national programs:

  1. MKR (Seven) — 1.766 million
  2. Seven News  — 1.517 million
  3. Murder Uncovered One (Seven) — 1.404 million
  4. Married At First Sight (Nine) — 1.342 million
  5. Seven News/Today Tonight — 1.337 million
  6. Nine News — 1.249 million
  7. Home and Away (Seven) — 1.241million
  8. Murder Uncovered Two (Seven) — 1.171 million
  9. A Current Affair (Nine) — 1.087 million
  10. 7pm ABC News — 1.054 million

Top metro programs:

  1. MKR (Seven)  — 1.201 million

Losers: No one really… yet, but there are some early candidates (in addition to Lethal Weapon on Nine)

Metro news and current affairs:

  1. Seven News —973,000
  2. Nine News — 948,000
  3. Nine News 6.30pm — 912,000
  4. Seven News/Today Tonight — 900,000
  5. A Current Affair (Nine) – 757,000
  6. 7pm ABC News – 734,000
  7. 7.30 (ABC) — 543,000
  8. The Project 7pm (Ten) — 539,000
  9. Ten Eyewitness News — 459,000
  10. The Project 6.30pm (Ten) — 351,000

Morning TV:

  1. Sunrise (Seven) — 577,000
  2. Today (Nine) – 423,000
  3. News Breakfast (ABC 1,  195,000 + 95,000 on News 24) — 190,000
  4. The Morning Show (Seven) — 230,000
  5. Today Extra (Nine) — 167,000
  6. Studio 10 (Ten) — 154,000

Top five pay TV channels:

  1. Fox 8  (2.7%)
  2. TVHITS  (2.2%)
  3. LifeStyle  (1.9%)
  4. Sky News (1.7%)
  5. UKTV (1.6%)

Top five pay TV programs:

  1. The Flash (Fox8) — 82,000
  2. DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (Fox8) — 48,000
  3. Family Guy (Fox8) — 45,000
  4. The Simpsons (Fox8) – 45,000
  5. The Simpsons (Fox8) – 45,000