mX taking hold in Sydney

In week
six of its Sydney trial run, News
Ltd’s commuter paper, mX, has seen its circulation jump sharply. The
initial run was 54,000 copies a day, but that has been lifted to 77,000 copies a
day this week. News
sources say it’s suffering from a reluctance by advertisers to commit until the
trial period is over. So it’s something of a vicious circle until News makes a
long term commitment.

Last night’s TV
ratings

The Winners

 Seven was surprisingly strong last night. Lost was first, again with 1.86
million viewers. Seven News
by only 1,000 viewers over Nine News. SBS’s cricket broadcast averaged
747,000 people. The cricket ran second behind Seven from 7.30pm to
9.30pm, with an average audience of 1.071 million people. Seven’s
average audience from 7.30 to 10.30pm was 418,000 larger than Ten in
second place – a surprisingly big margin.
The Losers

Body Work on Nine – Megan Gale might do it for David
Jones, but not for Nine viewers (only 714,000 people tuned in). I Can Change Your Life at 9pm was another loser for Nine, with only 641,000
people watching. Nine now has a black spot on Thursday nights, to go
with the black spot on Tuesday nights at 7.30pm. Nine’s work with Gale
was a big failure and another example of how the ‘star-making’ network has
lost its touch.
News & CA

A very mixed Night, Seven News
(1.346 million) and Today Tonight (1.317 million) won nationally over Nine News
(1.345 million and A Current Affair (1.255 million) thanks to huge wins in
Perth. In Sydney Seven News won the 6pm slot but A Current Affair beat Today
Tonight. In Melbourne though ACA lost to TT but Nine News stretched its gap over
Seven. Nine won Brisbane, split Adelaide with Nine winning the News and Today
Tonight beating ACA. But in Perth Seven News beat Nine by more than doubling its
audience, as did Today Tonight over
ACA.
The Stats

Seven won every market and ended up with a share of
28.4% to Nine with 23.2%. Ten was on 19.8% and hurt by SBS (17.5% having the
cricket, as was the ABC on 11.0%.
Glenn Dyer’s
comments

 The SBS broadcasting of the cricket once again hurt Ten, the
ABC and to a lesser extent, Nine. Seven seemed to have lost fewer viewers,
enabling it to score a surprisingly big win. Tonight it’s cricket v AFL and NRL,
and on Saturday night it’s a real sports battle: cricket v rugby union (Australia
v New Zealand) and the AFL on Ten (but not in Sydney seeing its an out-of-town
match and it’s going with
movies).