The Block: All Stars nipped at the heels of Packed to the Rafters last night but the strength of Seven’s family-focused drama kept The Block in third.

There was just a gap of 20,000 sets of eye balls between The Block (1.372 million) and Packed (1.392 million) last night, according to OzTam’s preliminary metro ratings.

The Block did take second place among the 16-39 and 18-49 demographics, beating Packed on both occasions.

The elimination episode of My Kitchen Rules, billed as the jocks versus the nerds, pulled in an audience of 1.903 million for Seven and ruled both important age brackets.

Nine’s The Big Bang Theory sat in sixth place overall with a five city metro audience of 1.09 million.

The comedy was a hit among 16-39 and 18-49 year olds where it came third and fourth respectively.

Ten’s highest rating program on Tuesday evening was NCIS in 15^th place and was watched by 655,000 viewers.

MasterChef: The Professionals was again out of the top 20 and was ranked 14^th in 16-39s and 16^th in the 18-49 age group.

Turning to the news battle, Seven News won the war with 1.195 million viewers ahead of Nine News’ 1.147 million.

ABC News won 949,000 viewers and Ten News at Five attracted an audience of 642,000.

Seven took a 29.3% share of all free-to-air viewers as runner up Nine claimed 22.1%.