Australians were tempted last night, but they were also still interested in desperation among some American housewives.

The successful resurrection of Sale of the Century, now called Temptation, will please Nine, but the opening night’s 1.626 million national audience won’t last. Nine will be happy if it settles at the 1.2 million level and makes the network competitive with Home and Away and Big Brother.

But those programs will both battle for the 16 to 39 viewer, while Nine will be trying to snaffle as many as the 40 plus audience, which Sale/Temptation did when it was last on Nine several years ago. Figures from last night show that Seven and especially Ten dominated the younger viewers, while Temptation had the lion’s share of the 40-plus and especially the 55-plus viewers.

It wasn’t a good night for Nine across the board: the switching of Frasier repeats to 5:30pm bombed badly, with only 362,000 people tuning in and the audience for Seven’s Deal or No Deal jumped past the million mark to 1.025 million, where it beat the Ten News.

That made the bounce by the Nine News to 1.602 million even better. Seven News faded and didn’t pick up from the Deal surge. Seven News was watched by 1.589 million. Today Tonight was beaten by ACA by 36,000 people, but TT beat ACA in Sydney and Seven News still crushed Nine in Sydney by 101,000 viewers.

Desperate Housewives dominated the night with another 2.09 million average audience and number one position in all markets.

Nine won nationally with 28.9% to Seven on 28.2%, Ten back on 21.0%, the ABC with 15.4% and SBS with 6.5%