Seven won Sydney, Adelaide and Perth, but lost Melbourne and Brisbane where they are a bunch of Big Brother-loving nostalgia buffs. It also scored an even more convincing win in the regional markets as Nine lagged badly. Ten also fell behind the ABC in both the metros and regional markets as MasterChef failed to again ignite in its final week and Wanted again went missing.

So weak was Nine in Sydney that it tied second place in the main channels with ABC1 (its news and current affairs night). And yet Nine’s offerings proved more popular in Melbourne and Sydney. But not in regional areas where Seven won the main channels (through Prime and 7QLD) by 10 percentage points. Thanks to Big Brother and The Amazing ’80s, Nine just beat Seven in the 16 to 54 demographic in metro markets. Overall, including the regions, it was a different story.

The results episode of The X Factor topped the night with 2.216 million national/ metro 1.428 million/ 788,000 regional viewers, while Home and Away was solid with 1.558 million national/ 1 million metro/ 558,000 regional/ viewers. Seven though was let down by the weak Mr Selfridge after The X Factor ended at around 8.40pm. Mr S managed 1.176 million national/ 777,000 metro/ 399,000 regional viewers. Nine’s cut and paste effort, The Amazing ’80s (with Ray Martin driving the nostalgia trip, before the internet) averaged 1.230 million national/ 894,000 metro/ 336,000 regional viewers from 8.30pm. It held its own after Big Brother had averaged 1.180 million national/887,000 metro/ 293,000 regional viewers. Regional viewers didn’t like the The Amazing 80s or Big Brother all that much, compared with the way they were greeted by metro viewers.

MasterChef staggered to 1.074 million national/ 811,000 metro/ 363,000 regional viewers. If this series was a restaurant, it would have closed weeks ago given the high cost of the fit-out, the head chefs, the menu, and not to mention the variable quality of the nightly dishes.

Tonight sees the grand final of Nine’s rather underwhelming Great Australian Bake Off, but Ten starts probably the most obvious ad on TV (and it’s a wonder how it got to be classified as non-advertising content). It’s called Recipe to Riches and is a cooking program with the successful product produced tonight ending up on the shelves of retailer Woolworths tomorrow. Will Woolworths do any testing to make sure the product is safe and meets food and safety guidelines?

Network channel share:

  1. Seven (30.6%)
  2. Nine (25.9%)
  3. ABC (20.6%)
  4. Ten (17.8%)
  5. SBS (5.2%)

Network main channels:

  1. Seven (22.6%)
  2. Nine (19.9%)
  3. ABC1 (15.4%)
  4. Ten (11.8%)
  5. SBS ONE (4.3%)

Top 5 digital channels: 

  1. 7TWO (4.1%)
  2. 7mate (4.0%)
  3. GO (3.6%)
  4. Eleven (3.2%)
  5. ABC2 (2.8%)

Top 10 national programs:

  1. The X Factor Live – results (Seven) — 2.216 million
  2. Seven News — 2.014 million
  3. Nine News — 1.852 million
  4. Home and Away (Seven) — 1.558 million
  5. Today Tonight (Seven) — 1.467 million
  6. ABC News — 1.453 million
  7. Australian Story (ABC 1) — 1.253 million
  8. The Amazing ’80s (Nine) — 1.230 million
  9. A Current Affair (Nine) — 1.227 million
  10. Big Brother (Nine) — 1.180 million

Top metro programs:

  1. The X Factor Live – results (Seven) — 1.428 million
  2. Seven News — 1.324 million
  3. Nine News — 1.263 million
  4. Today Tonight (Seven) — 1.166 million
  5. A Current Affair (Nine) — 1.027 million
  6. Home and Away (Seven) — 1 million

Losers:  Wanted, again — 653,000 national/457,000 metro/ 299,000 regional viewers for a live episode that featured Crimestoppers. Did they phone landline owners last night wanting to know if they were watching Wanted? It would have helped if they did. Blue Bloods, Ten, 9.30pm, just 335,000 national/237,000 metro/98,000 regional viewers. A flop replacing a flop called The Americans. Nice to see some programming consistency from Ten.Metro news and current affairs:

  1.  Seven News — 1.324 million
  2. Nine News — 1.263 million
  3. Today Tonight (Seven) — 1.166 million
  4. A Current Affair (Nine) — 1.027 million
  5. ABC  News — 978,000
  6. Q&A (ABC1, 7o5,000, 81,000 News24) — 786,000
  7. 7.30 (ABC1) — 784,000
  8. Media Watch (ABC1) — 707,000
  9. Four Corners (ABC1) — 701,000
  10. Ten News  — 676,000

Morning TV:

  1. Today (Nine)  – 351,000
  2. Sunrise (Seven) – 349,000
  3. News Breakfast (ABC 1, 56,000, 39,000 News 24) – 95,000

Top pay TV channels:

  1. Fox Sports 1 (3.8%)
  2. TV1 (2.4%)
  3. LifeStyle (2.2%)
  4. Fox Footy (2.1%)
  5. MTV, Fox 8 (1.8%)

Top five pay TV programs:

  1. NRL: Cronulla v Easts  (Fox Sports 1) – 294,000
  2. Monday Night With Matty Johns (Fox Sports 1) – 175,000
  3. AFL: On The Couch (Fox Footy) – 151,000
  4. AFL: 360 (Fox Footy) – 150,000
  5. AFL: Open Mike (Fox Footy ) – 84,000