Television audiences fell under the spell of Roger Federer last night, as the Swiss tennis star’s match on Seven pulled viewers from MasterChef: The Professionals.
Federer’s win against Canadian Milos Raonic wooed 1.034 million viewers, according to OzTam’s preliminary overnight metro ratings.
The match shaved off almost 150,000 viewers from the second episode of Ten’s MasterChef: The Professionals which premiered on Sunday ahead of the tennis with 1.165 million viewers.
Media experts have said that MasterChef will face tough competition from blockbuster tennis games and the cricket.
Last night, 1.019 million viewers tuned into the cooking competition to see the chefs serve a three-course dinner on a pop-up restaurant on a Melbourne tram.
The return of long-running soapy Home and Away nabbed a spot in the top 10 with an audience of 938,000 tuning into Seven’s show.
The Big Bang Theory pulled in 767,000 viewers for Nine while the evening’s second episode sat in 11th place with 705,000.
Nine’s The Mentalist sat in 17th place and had 582,000 viewers.
Seven News topped the ratings with 1.268 million viewers, followed by Nine News with 1.144 million and Seven’s Today Tonight on 1.086 million.
Nine’s A Current Affair had 979,000 viewers while the ABC News claimed 952,000 sets of eyeballs in seventh place.
Seven dominated the evening with a share of all free-to-air-channel viewers of 34.4%. Nine sat exactly 10 percentage points behind Seven on 24.4% while Ten took a 19.8% share. The ABC claimed 16.9% and the SBS had a 4.5% share.
