Nine’s night, but the real story was another bad night for the heavily promoted, high cost Eddie McGuire hosted Footy Show. The third night of its new look and the Melbourne audience (237,000) was down a massive 37% from the opening audience on August 10 of 381,000. Nine has a raft of new programs like True Stories, This Time Last Year, the Ninja Warriors and the return of Doctor Doctor, but its biggest gamble (with a lot cost and ego) is the revamp of The Footy Show.

Seven’s Front Bar meanwhile, has withstood the initial shock of Eddie’s return and its Melbourne audience edged back up to 175,000 last night from 164,000 a week ago. The Bar‘s low cost means it is a rare winner at the moment for Seven.  Its national audience last night was 319,000 — within sight of the AFL show’s 418,000. Elsewhere, Ten returned Wrong Girl to its line up — it was the wrong move the metro audience alone of 391,000 at 8.30pm tells us that (and just 539,000 nationally) — too much Offspring, which is fading on its own.

In the regions, Seven News was again tops with 568,000 people, followed by Seven News/Today Today with 477,000, then Home and Away on 438,000, A Current Affair was fourth with 376,000 and The Chase at 5.30pm was fifth with 374,000.

Network channel share:

  1. Nine (30.4%)
  2. Seven (26.4%)
  3. Ten (20.0%)
  4. ABC (15.9%)
  5. SBS (7.3%)

Network main channels:

  1. Nine (24.4%)
  2. Seven (15.6%)
  3. Ten (13.6%)
  4. ABC (10.0%)
  5. SBS ONE (5.3%)

Top 5 digital channels: 

  1. 7TWO (5.1%)
  2. ONE (3.7%)
  3. ABC 2 (3.6%)
  4. 7mate (3.2%)
  5. Eleven (2.7%)

Top 10 national programs:

  1. Seven News  — 1.500 million
  2. Seven News/Today Tonight — 1.382 million
  3. Nine/NBN News (6.30) — 1.325 million
  4. Nine/NBN News — 1.309 million
  5. A Current Affair (Nine) — 1.266 million
  6. Home and Away (Seven) — 1.061 million
  7. 7pm ABC News — 1.009 million
  8. The Bachelor (Ten)— 968,000
  9. The Chase Australia 5.30pm (Seven) — 945,000
  10. The Project 7pm (Ten) — 849,000

Top metro programs: None with a million or more viewers

Losers: The Footy Show, Wrong Girl and the ABC

Metro news and current affairs:

  1. Seven News — 1.100 million
  2. Seven News/Today Tonight — 1.093 million
  3. Nine News (6.30pm) — 1.037 million
  4. Nine News — 1.022 million
  5. A Current Affair (Nine) – 965,000
  6. 7pm ABC News – 918,000
  7. 7.30 (ABC) — 776,000
  8. The Project 7pm (Ten) — 613,000
  9. Ten Eyewitness News — 500,000
  10. The Project 6.30pm (Ten) — 451,000

Morning (National) TV:

  1. Sunrise (Seven) —487,000
  2. Today (Nine) – 456,000
  3. News Breakfast (ABC,  163,000 + 90,000 on News 24) — 253,000
  4. The Morning Show (Seven) — 215,000
  5. Today Extra (Nine) — 180,000
  6. Studio 10 (Ten) — 116,000

Top five pay TV channels:

  1. Fox League (3.4%)
  2. TVHITS  (2.6%)
  3. LifeStyle, Fox 8  (2,0%)
  4. Nick Jr, Sky News (1.7%)

Top five pay TV programs:

  1. NRL: Brisbane v Parramatta (Fox League) — 233,000
  2. The Late Show With Matty Johns (Fox League) — 103,000
  3. Thursday Night League (Fox League) — 74,000
  4. Aussie Gold Hunters (Discovery) — 71,000
  5. AFL: 360 (Fox Footy) – 65,000