The Block and House Rules fight it out

Channel Nine’s reality show The Block narrowly stayed in front of Seven’s fellow reality show House Rules, on Thursday, with both getting just over 1.2m viewers.

The Block was second most popular show of the night, according to overnight metro ratings from OzTAM, taking 1.276 million viewers while House Rules had 1.236 million.

Ten’s Masterchef continued to struggle, with only 549,000 people tuning in for the weekly masterclass episode of the cooking show.

Nine had the lion’s share of the nightly ratings, with 23.9 per cent of all recorded viewers. Seven trailed at 20.5 per cent and Ten had 14.1 per cent.