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The Voice season six return helps Nine win the night

Despite launching to its lowest audience ever, last night’s episode of The Voice topped the ratings ladder – pulling in 1.18m metro viewers – helping Nine to a win.

Monday night marked the second night of the post-Easter ratings battle for the main commercial networks with Nine securing a 24.2% average audience share, compared to Seven’s 21.0%, according to OzTam’s overnight preliminary metro ratings.

Last year’s return of The Voice went up against the first episode of Ten’s Masterchef in 2016 and was watched by 1.4m metro viewers – at the time its lowest launch audience. In 2015 the reality singing competition kicked off with 1.557m metro viewers, down significantly from its 2014 first episode numbers of 2.155m. Season two of The Voice in 2013 had 1.828m metro viewers for episode one, compared to 2.177m in 2012 when it first hit screens.

The only other non-news and current affairs programs to make it into the top 10 were all on Seven: My Kitchen Rules, which came in sixth with 1.022m; Home and Away. which placed ninth with 665,000; and game show The Chase which was 10th with 619,000.

Last night also saw Nine premiere House of Bond – the fictionalised biopic of business tycoon Alan Bond, which his family has slammed as “shameful and inaccurate” – to an audience of 613,000, placing it at 11th for the night. The second and final episode of the drama will air tonight at 9pm after The Voice.

With the addition of regional figures, which include viewer numbers from the affiliate stations on which the network’s programs are broadcast, Seven News topped the night with 1.758m viewers, taking over The Voice which had 1.624m. My Kitchen Rules jumped to third place with 1.602m.

House of Bond picked up an additional 288,000 regional viewers, bringing its total national figure to 907,000.

It was another unremarkable ratings night for Ten, with its highest ranked-show, the second half-hour of The Project at 7pm, pulling in an average audience of 552,000 across the five capital cities – placing it in 13th position for the night. The only other Ten show to make it into the top 20 was Ten Eyewitness News at 5pm at 17th, which had 482,000 viewers.

The ABC had five shows in the top 20 – ABC News (745,000), 7.30 (573,000), Australian Story (551,000), Media Watch (447,000) and Four Corners (431,000) – helping it once again beat Ten with an 11.4% audience share, compared to the commercial network’s 7.9%. SBS had a 3.6% share for the evening.

Once the networks’ multi-channel offerings were factored in, Seven took the lead for the night with a 35.3% audience share, compared to Nine’s 31.0%, ABC’s 15.1%, Ten’s 13.3% and SBS’ 5.4%.

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