The second outing for the much-hyped Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D on Seven failed to live up to last week’s top performance, losing 400,000 viewers and dropping down to sixth spot.

That also meant that Nine stole the biggest audience share on the free-to-air networks last night, with 29.7% of the share. Seven won 28.2% of the audience share, according to figures from OzTam.

S.H.I.E.L.D won 887,000 viewers last night, compared to last week’s 1.301 million.

Seven’s Home and Away was the highest ranking non-news show last night, with 909,000 viewers.

The ABC’s Gruen Planet (884,000 viewers), Nine’s Big Brother (826,000) and Seven’s Cosentino: The Magic The Mystery The Madness (770,000) were the other non-news shows to make the top 10.

Nine News topped last night’s ratings, with 1.106 million people tuning in, closely followed by Seven News with 1.094 million.

Completing the top 10 were Nine’s A Current Affair (third place with 952,000 viewers), Seven’s Today Tonight (fifth place with 895,000 viewers) and ABC News (eighth place with 856,000 viewers).