Close race for Oz eyeballs
Seven, Nine, Ten all have ratings success stories
Nine won 34 of the year's 40 ratings weeks but those figures do not show that it was often a tight race with Seven, which got off to a flying start winning six of the first eight weeks.
All three networks have their success stories: Nine is the overall winner; Ten won its target 18-39 demographic for the fifth year running; while Seven is the only network to show audience growth in primetime, according to the OzTam ratings system.
In total aud shares Nine won with 29.2 (down 0.7), Seven came second with 27.1 (up 2.2) and Ten lost the most ground with 21.8 (down 1.9). Pubcaster the ABC was fourth on 15.7 (down 1.2) and SBS had 6.2 (up 1.6).
Seven gave Nine a scare when it launched its two U.S. hits "Desperate Housewives" (2.1 million) and "Lost" (1.9 million) early in the year. Local hit "Border Security" piggybacked on "Housewives" to draw auds of 1.8 million.
Web also had the No. 1 local hit with hot-footing celebrity skein "Dancing With the Stars," which drew 2.3 million viewers for the final.
But in a year when Oz TV turned 50 years old, the Nine Network made nostalgia pay with locally produced clip show "20 to 1," which regularly drew auds of 1.6 million putting it in the top 10 shows of the year.
Overall, local drama took a pasting. Nine's pricey drama "The Alice" was cut after regularly drawing below 1 million viewers and Seven's male skewed "Last Man Standing" also failed to attract eyeballs.
In a country where the half-hour format is largely reserved for sudsers, Ten's bold half-hour drama experiment "The Surgeon" also failed to reach the magic million and it was not mentioned to return in the web's 2006 program launch.
Nine's "McLeod's Daughters" was the top-rating Oz drama with 1.3 million viewers.
Reality TV proved it was no longer bulletproof with the third "Australian Idol" final averaging 1.9 million viewers on Ten, down from 3.3 million last year. Despite this, Ten has announced a fourth series in 2006.
SBS has been the quiet achiever particularly with its new focus on sport. A record number of viewers watched Oz qualifying for the soccer World Cup against Uruguay on Nov. 16. Aud peaked at 3.4 million during the penalty shootout.
