On the first official night of the television ratings season, it wasn’t a big-ticket format or a highly-promoted import in the top spot but Nine News.

Nine News pulled an audience of 1.401 million viewers and was followed by a trio shows for Seven, according to OzTam’s preliminary metro ratings.

Border Security – Australia’s Front Line sat in second place with 1.395 million viewers followed by Sunday Night with 1.346 million and The Force – Behind the Line on 1.339 million.

The premiere of the lauded-third season of Downton Abbey sat in fifth place overall with 1.331 million viewers.

In the 8.30 slot it outperformed Ten’s new drama Elementary which pulled in 944,000 viewers. The result for the show’s second episode is down from last week’s premiere of 1.2 million viewers.

However, Ten did rule the important 16-39 and 18-49 demographics by taking the top three in the younger demo (MasterChef, Elementary and Modern Family) and the top two (MasterChef and Elementary) in the latter.

Ten’s MasterChef: The Professionals made a miraculous recovery last night as the absence of direct-competitor My Kitchen Rules (MKR) added half a million viewers to reach an audience of 1.028 million.

MasterChef finished last week with a measly 523,000 viewers while MKR pulled in audiences of two million-plus.

Modern Family sat in 10^th place and claimed an audience of 922,000 for Ten.

The cricket on Nine, which ran from 6.30pm until 10, had an average metro audience of 1.078 million.

Seven won the evening overall as its main channel claimed a 26.8% share of all free-to-air viewers ahead of Nine’s 23.1%.