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Today Show exit aftermath episode wins breakfast ratings battle

Nine’s first Today Show without Lisa Wilkinson beat Seven’s Sunrise for the first time in nearly a fortnight as viewers tuned in to see co-host Karl Stafanovic’s reaction to her abrupt exit.

The Today Show averaged 301,000 metro viewers, while Sunrise rated 262,000. The last time Today beat Sunrise was on October 5. Today won in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, while Sunrise won in Perth and Adelaide.

The episode featured a segment from Wilkinson’s co-hosts paying tribute following her departure from the network to Ten’s The Project the previous evening.

Meanwhile later in the evening, the new season of The Big Bang Theory kicked off on Nine with 999,000 metro viewers, placing second to The Block’s 1.319m metro viewers.

The first episode of the 11th season of the sitcom placed second across the key advertising demographics -16-39s, 18-49s and 25-54s – as Australian viewers tuned in to see Amy’s response to Sheldon’s proposal.

Renovation show The Block topped all key ad demographics.

Seven’s most watched entertainment show was Home and Away with 655,000 metro viewers, while Ten did not have an entertainment program in the top 20 shows.

Seven’s drama 800 Words reached an audience of 513,000.

On the 6pm news front, Seven defeated Nine with 980,000 metro viewers over Nine’s 881,000.

Ten’s most watched program was the 7pm to 7.30pm segmentThe Project which rated 555,000 metro viewers. The previous half hour pulled in 423,000 viewers.

On ABC, the premiere of Screen Time attracted 437,000 metro viewers. The new program, hosted by Chris Taylor, aims to review films and television series and talk about the wider film industry.

Nine won the night with an average audience share of 25.5%, well ahead of Seven’s 17.2%.

ABC beat Ten with a 12.4% share over a 11.8% share, and SBS’ share was 5.5%.

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