The Block busted down to third on its debut

Nine’s new Wednesday reality TV lineup failed to catch fire with The Block beaten into third place behind Seven’s Border Security and Ten’s Glee, while The Boss Is Coming To Dinner delivered only 788,000 viewers.

Nine had hoped that home reality contest The Block would deliver the blockbuster ratings of the original 2003 series which averaged 2.4m.

But last night saw its product endorsement-heavy debut pull in a capital city audience of just 1.134m, ninth for the night and less than half that of the first series, according to preliminary overnight ratings from OzTam.

The new season of Border Security delivered 1.464m and The Force which followed pulled in 1.369m, while the start of the second series of Glee on Ten pulled in 1.23m.

Meanwhile The Boss Is Coming To Dinner – an attempt to combine the formats of The Apprentice and My Kitchen Rules – did even worse for Nine.

It rated 18th for the night nationally, sinking to 22nd in Brisbane. In the same timeslot it was beaten by Seven’s City Homicide which did 1.014m, 12th for the night and Ten’s series return of House which was 15th with 905,000.

Meanwhile adland discussion show The Gruen Transfer, which now has only one more episode left in the series, rated 1.448m for ABC1. It won the night in Melbourne

The morning battle saw another overwhelming win for Seven’s Sunrise (432,000)  over Nine’s Today (299,000).

Despite Today’s Melbourne push this week, it rated outside the top 50 shows for the city pulling in just 76,000, with the added embarrassment that ABC1 kids shows including Chuggington (85,000) outrated it in metro Victoria.

Wednesday’s top 15 shows:

1. Seven News Seven 1.521m
2. Border Security Seven 1.464m
3. The Gruen Transfer ABC 1.448m
4. Spicks and Specks ABC 1.421m
5. Today Tonight Seven 1.412m
6. The Force Seven 1.369m
7. Glee Ten 1.230m
8. Nine News Nine 1.192m
9. The Block Nine 1.134m
10. A Current Affair Nine 1.126m
11. Home and Away Seven 1.092m
12. City Homicide Seven 1.014m
13. ABC News ABC 1.013m
14. Two and a Half Men Nine 0.936m
15. House Ten 0.905m

Wednesday’s channel share:

• Seven: 25.3%
• Nine: 23.0%
• Ten: 20.3%
• ABC1: 17.3%
• SBS1: 3.7%
• GO!: 3.3%
• 7TWO: 2.6%
• ABC2: 1.9%
• One: 1.0%
• ABC3: 0.5%
• ABC News 24: 0.4%
• SBS2: 0.4%

Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.

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topics Border Security Glee Gruen Transfer Nine OzTam ratings Seven Sunrise Ten The Block The Boss is Coming To Dinner The Force Today TV

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Comments: 1

True Blue 24 Sep 10

does this remind anyone else of last year’s My Kitchen Rules?

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