(Image: AAP/Dean Lewins)

The scene: wet Thursday night in Sydney, TV dull, Q+A absolutely navel-gazing (they were talking about China), Paul Keating got a mention as eyelids slid shut. Talk about the ghosts of governments past. Halloween was nearly two weeks ago! 388,000 valiant souls stuck with it. How many kept their eyes open the whole time?

Over on Ten, the players in the Australia v Saudi Arabia World Cup qualifier needed umbrellas on what was a miserable night and a odd bouncing pitch — 585,000 on Ten — not as much as Gogglebox Australia would normally get (800,000 plus on a Thursday night) but compared to what else was offered up last night, a good result.

Love Island on Nine — 200,000 — will be streamed up to around 400,000 or perhaps a bit more. How do Nine and advertisers know how long streamers watch — do they pay total attention? I bet most of them are texting, TikToking, Tweeting, Insta-ing, Snapchatting, WeChatting (or Facebooking for the oldies) — and sometimes watching.

Seven won narrowly from Nine in total people and their main channel shares were tied.

The timing of the Australia-Pakistan T20 semi won by Australia was tough for cricket fans, with the start time around 1am Sydney time on Friday — so only 59,000 managed to stay up to watch on Fox Cricket, but we don’t know how many watched the stream on Kayo (again underlining why streaming data, even for Netflix, is not transparent at all). The final is 1am on Monday. These times suit Indian TV viewers (8pm prime time on the Indian west coast around Mumbai) and it will be early afternoon in the UK.

Regional top five: Seven News, 556,000; Seven News 6.30, 527,000; Home And Away, 354,000; Nine News, 340,000; 7pm ABC News, 327,000.

Network channel share:

  1. Seven (28.3%)
  2. Nine (27.7%)
  3. Ten (19.3%)
  4. ABC (15.7%)
  5. SBS (9.0%)

Network main channels:

  1. Seven, Nine (17.6%)
  2. Ten (12.6%)
  3. ABC (10.5%)
  4. SBS ONE (4.4%)

Top 5 digital channels: 

  1. 7TWO (4.2%)
  2. 7flix (3.8%) 
  3. GO, 9Life, 10 Peach (3.1%)

Top 10 national programs:

  1. Seven News — 1.464 million
  2. Seven News 6.30 — 1.383 million
  3. Nine News  — 1.202 million
  4. Nine News 6.30 — 1.144 million
  5. 7pm ABC News — 951,000
  6. A Current Affair (Nine) — 864,000
  7. Home And Away (Seven) — 846,000
  8. Home And Away – Late (Seven) — 813,000
  9. The Chase Australia 5.30pm (Seven) — 766,000
  10. Gogglebox Australia (Ten) — 756,000

Top metro programs: None with a million or more viewers

Losers: Cricket fans who wanted to watch the T-20 semi against Pakistan

Metro news and current affair

  1. Seven News — 900,000
  2. Seven News 6.30  — 845,000
  3. Nine News  — 869,000
  4. Nine News 6.30 — 803,000
  5. ACA (Nine) — 625,000
  6. 7pm ABC News — 574,000
  7. 7.30 (ABC) — 448,000
  8. The Project 7pm (Ten) — 270,000
  9. Ten News First — 268,000
  10. The Project 6.30pm — 198,000

Morning (national) TV:

  1. Sunrise (Seven) — 421,000/237,000
  2. Today (Nine) — 335,000/229,000
  3. ABC News Breakfast (Nine) — 327,000/n/a
  4. The Morning Show (Seven) — n/a
  5. Today Extra (Nine) — n/a
  6. Studio 10 (Ten) —  n/a

Top 5 pay TV programs:

  1. Cricket: T20 World Cup, Australia vs Pakistan (Fox Cricket) — 59,000
  2. Outback Opal Hunters (Discovery) — 55,000
  3. The Great British Sewing Bee (LifeStyle) — 52,000
  4. Paul Murray Live, The Bolt Report (Sky News) — 47,000