Nine’s night, AFL’s boasting rights. Nine easily won metro and regional markets last night because of the NRL Grand Final won by Cronulla for the first time, which meant a record all time metro audience of 2.647 million. The game however wasn’t as strongly supported in the regions: the 1.086 million average was lower than the 1.261 million for the 2015 Grand Final (which was close to an all time high). All up 3.773 million people watched the Sharks win, well short of the 4.090 million who watched Saturday’s AFL win by the Bulldogs. But it was up on the 3.576 million who watched the 2015 grand final across the country.

And even though the fairytale win by Cronulla matched the fairytale win by Footscray, there was no sign of any tune in for the presentations that we saw on Saturday and the Saturday before as world spread of the Bulldogs win over the Swans. That tune in from the actual game is very rarely seen, and especially in the hundreds of thousands as we have seen on both Saturdays.

Another oddity was that the NRL Grand Final attracted more supporters in Melbourne (where the Storm come from)with 641,000 people, than the Swans did in Sydney on Saturday: 534,000. It has been the same all year and perhaps the NRL and the Storm have made bigger inroads in Sydney than appears on the surface. The AFL Grand Final audience in Sydney has never come anywhere near the peak of 991,000 set in 2005.

In the regions, the five most watched programs were: The NRL Grand Final game, 1.086 million; the presentation, 769,000; the entertainment, 523,000; Seven News, 450,000; Nine News, 423,000.

Tonight sees new programs on Nine and Seven. Nine debuts Hyde and Seek (a ’new Australian thriller’) and Australian Crime Stories (which sounds like the a rewrite of the first Underbelly series, which if it is is a typical Nine cheap jack TV programming move). Seven brings back The X Factor: will it improve after the extreme makeover given the format since last year – new judges, now  look, the same confected enthusiasm. Seven starts its new drama, The Secret Daughter (echoes of the secret daughters in the Hancock and Wright billion prospecting and mining families of Perth).  X Factor though goes up against the ‘reveal’ episode of The Block. Could be bloody over at ten where Australian Survivor is the third program in the 7.30 pm slot and the weakest so far. — Click here to read Glenn Dyer’s full TV Ratings.