Less than half a percentage point separated Nine and Seven last night in the overall free to air evening market share, according to OzTam’s preliminary figures with 29.2 and 28.7 per cent respectively.

Seven News was the most watched program with 1.174 million views, followed by Nine News with 1.115 million viewers and Today Tonight came in third with 942,000 viewers.

The ABC followed its strong outing last night thanks to the Gruen Transfer with bragging rights for the most number of programs in the top 20 free to air programs with six programs making the list. Seven and Nine both had five shows in the top 20 and Ten got four. SBS missed out altogether gathering only 6.0 of the total free to air audience.