Glenn Dyer reports:

The Winners Nine won easily, despite a dominant early evening performance
by Seven. The poor performance by Seven’s middling Las Vegas at 8:30pm cost it
the night, along with a surprisingly weak effort in Melbourne. Home and Away was
again No. 1 with 1.468 million, followed by Today Tonight (1.431 million), Seven
News (1.314 million) and The Mole (1.283 million). Then came Temptation, Getaway, Law and Order SVU, with Nine
News and the Footy Shows rounding out the Top 10. An audience of 1.2 million for the
Footy Shows helped Nine from 9:30pm to 11pm. Seven
wasn’t helped by the continuing collapse of Alias at 9:30pm, which is down to
591,000 people. It may disappear soon.
The Losers

Ten. Without Law and Order
SVU, the network would have had a miserable night in all demographics because
its next most watched program was Neighbours at 6:30pm. You could also say the failure to provide viewers with on air
information last night about the legal action that stopped Enough Rope going to
air was not a fine performance on the part of the ABC. But it did enable the
ABC to show the third episode of Spitfire Ace, which marks the 65th anniversary
of the Battle of Britain. That seemed be a decision forced on
the ABC who would have pre-empted the program had Enough Rope gone to air at 8:30pm.
News & CA Seven news and Today Tonight had another big win, especially
Today Tonight. Seven won Sydney and Perth, Nine won
Melbourne and they split Brisbane and Adelaide. An interesting point
last night was that at the end of the News, at 6:29pm to be exact, tens
of thousands of viewers just fled Nine and headed elsewhere. TT’s average audience was more than 110,000 higher than Seven
News, while ACA’s audience fell an average 124,000 from Nine
News.
The Stats Nine with 30.3% from Seven with 26.0%, Ten on 20.1%, the
ABC with 17.8% and SBS with 5.9% (Inspector Rex repeats returned to SBS last
night at 7.30pm). Seven won Sydney and Brisbane, but Nine had a big win in
Melbourne, 33.9% to 21.3% for Seven, with the ABC sneaking into third place
ahead of Ten. The ABC finished third in Perth behind Nine and
Seven.
Glenn Dyer’s
comments		 Perversely the confusion last night about the Denton interview
with Mark Latham helped the ABC to a very solid performance. Viewers tuned in
for Enough Rope at 8.30pm, discovered that it wasn’t on and then stayed to
watch Spitfire Ace. The audience for the faltering drama, MDA picked up from the
mid 300s a week ago to 584,000 and then when Enough Rope went to air at 10:30pm, most of those stayed around (526,000). Nine now leads Seven narrowly in the
week by 0.4%. Survivor tonight will help Nine as will the NRL tomorrow night
in Sydney. But how will the Swans do in Sydney tonight? Another low
audience?