Honours even for Sunday’s TV, while Socceroo fans tune in for late night game

Tim Burrowes

June 21, 2010 11:38

All three of the major commercial networks enjoyed a show with more than 1.5m viewers on Sunday, overnight TV ratings reveal.

According to OzTam, Ten topped the night with more than 1.9m metro viewers tuning in for Masterchef. This was followed by nearly 1.7m for Seven News and 1.6m for Nine News.

Meanwhile, Nine’s Underbelly pulled in nearly 1.5m which was enough to take Nine to a win for the night.

Last week saw a narrow win for Nine with a 23.5% share to Seven’s 22.5. Ten brought in 21.2%, followed by ABC1 with 14.4%.

Despite its World Cup content, SBS1 was still fifth with 8.8% – although this is more than 50% up on typical audience share for the channel .

So far, the top ratings for SBS have been for Saturday night’s crunch Australia-Ghana game, which was broadcast at midnight Sydney time. It rated an average of 1.4m in metro households. Including regional audiences it averaged 1.7m viewers.

Sunday’s top rating TV shows:

Masterchef Ten 1.948m
Seven News Seven 1.660m
Nine News Nine 1.617m
Underbelly Nine 1.493m
Sunday Night Seven 1.344m
Customs Nine 1.290m
60 Minutes Nine 1.284m
Send in the Dogs Nine 1.250m
The Force Seven 1.132m
Border Security Seven 1.081m
Agatha Christie’s Poirot ABC 1.003m
Merlin Ten 1.003m
The Good Wife Ten 0.934m
ABC News ABC 0.906m
Doctor Who ABC 0.895m

Sunday’s channel share:

Nine: 24.8%
Ten: 23.0%
Seven: 22.3%
ABC1: 13.8%
SBS1: 7.3%
GO!: 4.6%
7TWO: 1.3%
One: 1.2%
ABC2: 0.8%
ABC3: 0.4%
SBS2: 0.4%

Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.