The return of American Idol, fast-tracked by Channel Ten, delivered an audience of 539,000, losing out to Seven’s tennis coverage, The Big Bang Theory and ABC’s 7.30 in its time slot.
Ten has been heavily trailing the show, which this year stars The Voice judge Keith Urban, for several weeks, but the two-hour premiere could only muster 15th spot for the channel overall.
Seven’s Aussie Open coverage got a boost as the top non-news show, with 930,000 viewers for the night session, according to OzTam’s preliminary report, whilst the daytime coverage was 17th overall with 499,000.
Seven News won the night with 1.196m, Nine News was second with 1.149m, with a repeat of QI for ABC1 eighth overall with 684,000.
However, Idol did help ten to an improved daily share, with 20% overall, ahead of ABC with 16.1%, but behind a dominant Seven with 32.7% and nine with 23.5%.
Ten launches it's next big format, MasterChef: The Professionals, on Sunday.
