House Rules keep ratings going for Seven

THE baton was passed last night as Seven's House Rules took top spot in the TV ratings.

House Rules

THE baton was passed last night as Seven's House Rules took top spot in the TV ratings.

Seven's spin-off from My Kitchen Rules averaged 1.54 million viewers in the five metro markets to be the most popular program of the night, consigning Nine's The Block Sky High to fourth for the night with 1.369m.

It was House Rules' season high by some margin and made its wan launch week, in which it barely opened with 803,000 and went backwards, a distant memory.

House Rules benefitted from the absence of Nine's The Voice although House Rules won in the head-to-head-battle when the two programs screened against each other (which last night was 7.34-8.07pm). During that period, The Block averaged 1.368m metro viewers against House Rules' 1.301m and won all key demos comfortably. House Rules dominated when The Block concluded and it was only up against a repeat of The Big Bang Theory (885,000) and the struggling Masterchef Australia (663,000).

The story was worse for Nine after The Big Bang Theory with its premiere of the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 not averaging more than 550,000 across its three hours.

Consequently, Seven won the night with a 25.8 per cent share in all people against Nine's 21.8 per cent and ABC1's 15.1 per cent. Ten languished with a 10.2 per cent share despite Ten News At Five recording its biggest audience of 2013: 812,000. Seven won 25-54 and 18-49 but Nine nabbed the 16-39 demographic with a 26.7 per cent share against Seven's 22.4 per cent.

Seven's season finale of Revenge benefitted from House Rules, adding 250,000 viewers on the previous week to lift to 1.127m viewers. Seven's coverage of Wimbledon also lifted 7TWO to a 4.6 per cent share to be the top multichannel for the night.

ABC1's Monday current affairs schedule was also up with Four Corners recording its best result since March (843,000) for its report on Bangladeshi manufacturing and Australian Story (844,000) and Media Watch (796,000) were also well up suggesting a sizeable ABC audience was watching The Voice. But Q&A, and its now tediously predictable panels, didn't move on previous weeks, steady with 639,000 viewers.

Preliminary OzTAM ratings, Monday 26 June

1 HOUSE RULES-REVEAL Seven 1,540,000

2 NINE NEWS Nine 1,419,000

3 SEVEN NEWS Seven 1,403,000

4 THE BLOCK SKY HIGH Nine 1,369,000

5 TODAY TONIGHT Seven 1,206,000

6 A CURRENT AFFAIR Nine 1,132,000

7 REVENGE Seven 1,127,000

8 HOME AND AWAY Seven 1,007,000

9 ABC NEWS ABC1 929,000

10 THE BIG BANG THEORY -RPT Nine 885,000

11 HOT SEAT Nine 844,000

12 AUSTRALIAN STORY ABC1 844,000

13 FOUR CORNERS ABC1 843,000

14 TEN NEWS AT FIVE Ten 812,000

15 MEDIA WATCH ABC1 796,000