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Ten starts the right side of 1m, but still loses out to tennis

Ten’s aggressive start to the ratings year delivered satisfactory numbers for the network despite stiff competition from the tennis on Seven.

Young Talent Time, at 6.30pm, rated 1.05m, while Modern Family at 7.30pm rated 1.13m, according to preliminary ratings from OzTam.

Ten’s audience then continued to build with comedy New Girl debuting with 1.28m at 8pm.

Ten then made the unusual move of running the debut of US drama Homeland commercial free for around the first half an hour. It rated 1.22m.  

Ten’s schedule was not helped by the timing of the Roger Federer – Bernard Tomic match which helped Seven to a prime time average of 1.899m. Analyst Steve Allen described Seven’s tennis ratings as “gold, gold, gold”. Aussie Tomic’s involvement helped ratings to a 189% increase on the same point in last year’s tournament.

A bigger disappointment for Ten would have been the performance of its first Sunday episode of The Project which rated 392,000.

During the daytime session, Seven’s audience for the tennis rated a strong 795,000.

The official ratings season does not begin until mid February but Ten, under the new leadership of CEO James Warburton decided to start early.

Tonight Ten will debut The Biggest Loser.

And Ten also announced today that it will be changing is schedule for this Tuesday night – rerunning Sunday’s episodes of Young Talent Time, New Girl and Homeland.

Nine’s top show last night was Nine News which rated 905,000. It was followed by The Big Bang Theory which rated 721,000 and 715,000 for its double episodes.

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