The Schapelle Corby, The Untold Story special on Nine last night rated well, with 1.37 million viewers, and helped Nine win the night’s ratings narrowly over Seven and Ten. But even though viewers seemed to like the 80-minute “special,” nothing new was revealed.

The special relied heavily on the efforts of other people. Host Mike Munro was wheeled into the studio and told to read for the autocue and ask questions. Without the Corby interview on 60 Minutes (paid for late last year) and the far more professional investigative report from the Sunday program of almost two weeks ago, last night’s special wouldn’t have been possible, such was the dearth of new material.

The program had a similar format to This is Your Life, Mike Munro’s main on-air gig. There was a series of segments, comments from guests, and a phone poll tacked on. When first revealing the poll, Munro hurried to point out that all proceeds would go to charity. But no mention of the profit made from selling advertising.

What was new was matching it with the worm. There was that old Nine hand, Steve Van Apren, the lie detector man used on ACA. Steve and the worm were pretty much the judge and jury, although the worm only ran for a couple of minutes at the end, almost as an afterthought.

It was all a bit tacky Even the phone poll, which had the “no” vote (Corby innocent) ahead at 92% with the “yes” vote (guilty) on 8%, was virtually identical to a poll last week on Nine’s Sunday program, which had the “no” vote at 93% and the “yes” vote at 7%.

The Schapelle Corby special lifted Nine to a win in the ratings last night, but its troubles between 6pm and 7pm were once again evident, despite a win nationally by the news. Nationally, Nine News was 57,000 ahead of Seven, but Seven beat Nine in Sydney by 67,000 people, an important win in the most important market.

As a result Today Tonight once again beat A Current Affair. The 197,000 margin in favour of Nine during the news reversed and became a 90,000 deficit in favour of Today Tonight. In other words a turnaround of 287,000 people, quite a turn-off.

Other developments last night saw Ten’s Jamie Oliver series sink sharply to just over a million viewers, down more than 250,000 on a week earlier. But Ten’s Medium continues to gather viewers, averaging 1.348 million. McLeod’s Daughters did OK for Nine with 1.35 million. Seven’s Air Crash Investigations slotted in at the last minute at 7:30pm was a surprise performer with 1.321 million people.

The 7pm Big Brother sank to 1.128 million. Overall, Nine won with a 29.8% share to Seven on 26.8% and Ten close up third with 25.3%. The ABC finished on 13.3% and SBS on 3.8%