Ashes draw record crowd to Gem

THE first day's play in the Ashes cricket series saw 14 wickets fall in a day and a record performance by Nine Network digital channel Gem.

THE first day's play in the Ashes cricket test series saw 14 wickets fall in a day and a record performance by Nine Network digital channel Gem, which is broadcasting the series on free-to-air.

Early signs are that Nine's decision to put the series on Gem, which usually attracts at older female audience, is paying off, with the opening session of the Australia v England contest averaging a healthy 627,000 viewers and the post-lunch play drawing 314,000.

That gave the digital channel a metropolitan network share of 12.2 per cent, believed to be the highest-ever for a multi-channel.

Combining Gem, Go and its main channel, which again had the night's top-rating show with The Block and a channel share of 23.4 per cent, Nine drew a total 39.2 per cent share of the metropolitan audience last night.

Fox Sports, which is carrying the Ashes series live on pay-TV, attracted another 728,000 across the day.

Seven Network, meanwhile, has cut reality series The Mole to just one night a week, on Wednesdays at 9.30pm, where its audience dwindled to 353,000. Seven's channel share was just 15 per cent, rising to 22.1 per cent when the digital channels were included - well behind Nine.

Ten's best of the evening was MasterChef, with 777,000 viewers watching stay-at-home mum Liliana Battle depart the show after her layered buttercream cake with pop rock icing failed to save her in "The Last Supper'' challenge.

Ten's channel share was 12.9 per cent, rising to 17.3 per cent on a network basis, while the ABC had 11.1 per cent (15.6 per cent across all channels) and SBS 5.1 per cent (5.8 per cent for the network).

OZTAM OVERNIGHT RANKINGS, JULY 10
1 The Block Sky High Nine 1,345,000
2 Nine News Nine 1,235,000
3 Seven News Seven 1,201,000
4 A Current Affair Nine 1,079,000
5 Today Tonight Seven 1,013,000
6 ABC News ABC 905,000
7 Home And Away Seven 838,000
8 MasterChef Australia Ten 777,000
9 Hot Seat Nine 717,000
10 Offspring Ten 711,000
11 TEN News At 5 Ten 681,000
12 7.30 ABC 664,000
13 Adam Hills Tonight ABC 649,000
14 QI ABC 637,000
15 Criminal Minds Seven 637,000
Copyright in the data is owned by OzTAM and may not be used or reproduced without permission.