Nine return to The Block for ratings boost

Nine’s crossover of its old Domestic Blitz format featuring contestants from The Block helped the channel to a narrow win over Seven on Sunday.

Domestic Blitz – The Block to the Rescue, featuring the renovation of  the home of two sister diagnosed with cervical cancer, averaged 1.359m metro viewers. Combined with solid ratings 60 Minutes and Nine News, Nine had a 23.8 per cent audience share over Seven’s 22.1 per cent.

However, Seven’s The X Factor was the top program of the night with a metro audience of 1.552m according to preliminary ratings from OzTAM.

Cricket fans also boosted Nine’s ratings with 571,000 metro viewers tuning into Nine’s digital station Gem for the fourth day of the third Ashes test, giving Gem 9.8 per cent of the audience share. The Ashes was also the top rating programming on subscription TV with 340,000 viewers tuning in to watch it on Fox Sports 2.