Seven then got respectable numbers for the Eddie The Eagle movie – 503,000. It is helping build interest in the Winter Olympics, which is apparently just days away!

Earlier in the day Seven’s telecast of the Super Bowl did 393,000. The halftime show was ranked separately with 421,000 and post-game coverage did 322,000. In the US, NBC had a match audience of 104m, down 7% YOY and the smallest audience in nine years.

Nine

A Current Affair started its week just over 800,000 with Married and Meghan Markle. And, as predicted in the most recent Mediaweek TV podcast, Sophie Monk arrives tomorrow night to tell all about her recent love adventure.

After starting its week on 835,000, Married At First Sight climbed a little higher to 879,000. The episode very narrowly had a bigger 25-54 audience than My Kitchen Rules. (The metro gap was just 1,000 viewers.)

Episode two of Travel Guides followed with Bali the destination. The episode did 610,000.

TEN

The first episode of The Project this week did 573,000 after 7pm with I’m A Celebrity hosts and comedian Claire Hooper amongst the guests.

Anthony Mundine was entertaining his fellow contestants and the TEN audience last night although the I’m A Celebrity numbers were down a little to 712,000, the smallest audience yet in the handful of episodes screened.

Law & Order: SVU followed with 317,000.

ABC

Australian Story and the rest of the Monday regulars were back in action last night.

The first Australian Story did 671,000 with its coverage of the wedding of Christine Forster, Tony Abbott‘s sister.

Four Corners was investigating the hunting of an international money launderer for its audience of 638,000.

The return of Media Watch featured proposed new laws on espionage and foreign interference and sponsored content on Nine News. The episode was on 563,000.

Then the first Q&A for 2018 missed the top 20 with 386,000 and a guest list that included Crikey founder Stephen Mayne.

SBS

Michael Mosley‘s Trust Me I’m A Doctor was the channel’s best on 206,000.

24 Hours In Emergency was then just short of that number – 195,000.

On Monday Fairfax made clear it believed the New Zealand Commerce Commission’s decision to prevent Stuff, formerly known as Fairfax NZ, and NZME from merging was incorrect after going over the NZ High Court’s ruling.

“After careful review and analysis of the High Court’s reasons, the companies continue to believe the NZCC was wrong in fact and wrong in law to decline clearance or authorisation of the merger,” Fairfax, publisher of The Australian Financial Review, said in a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange.

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Billionaire Richard Desmond is set to stop the presses on a 43-year publishing career with a £125m deal to sell his Expressand Star newspapers and celebrity magazine OK! this week, reports The Guardian.

Desmond has been in talks with Trinity Mirror, the publisher of the Labour-supporting Daily and Sunday Mirror titles, to offload his Brexit-backing titles since autumn.

A deal would mark the end of an era for Desmond, who started publishing in 1974 at the age of 23 with two music titles. In 1983, he won the UK licence to publish Penthouse and then a raft of other pornographic titles.

The launch of OK! magazine in 1993 shook up the celebrity magazine world. And in 2000, Desmond announced himself as a national newspaper magnate by buying Express Newspapers for £125m.

On completion of the deal, Desmond will hold a minority stake in Trinity Mirror, which will make him one of the publisher’s largest shareholders.

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Many taxpayers claim subscriptions as deductions in their line of work, but this recommendation would extend that tax break to everyone, in a bid to boost the flagging stocks of media companies struggling to fund journalism in the digital age.

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The business models for news publishers are expected to undergo rapid changes in the next 24 months, with half of the revenue for media businesses tipped to come from subscriptions, reports Fairfax Media’s Jennifer Duke.

This is expected to shift significantly by 2020, with subscription revenue to match advertising revenue.

By the end of 2018, Deloitte’s TMT (Technology, Media and Telecommunications) Predictions 2018 report estimated there would be 20 million digital-only news subscriptions worldwide.

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Launched to coincide with back to school, Kidspot Cares seeks to arm parents with the tools, support and advice they need to help their families combat and ultimately prevent bullying.

Wilson said: “We are seeing so many stories on this subject from the Kidspot.com.au community. Families have reported experiencing bullying in some situations from as young as four at day care and preschool. Kids are experiencing cyberbullying, verbal abuse and also physical violence – no one appears to be immune. Kids tend to be bullied for physical appearance and also because of behaviour such as ADHD – and some instances bullying was even perpetrated by parents, such as not inviting certain kids to birthday parties.

“These stories have shocked the Kidspot team into action, which is why we are committing to Kidspot Cares and our new partnership with You Can Sit With Me. We didn’t want to just report on incidences of bullying. We wanted to do something to help parents, families and children stop this behaviour on an ongoing basis and ultimately prevent it.”

Kidspot Cares campaign also includes Kidspot.com.au’s bullying resources and information in one place on the site for parents – kidspot.com.au/school/bullying.

Kidspot.com.au is part of News Corp Australia’s NewsDNA.

The latest film in the Cloverfield franchise was unveiled during a Super Bowl ad, which revealed that people could go watch the whole film on Netflix as soon as the game ended, reports The Hollywood Reporter.

That surprise film, The Cloverfield Paradox, was originally called God Particle. Most importantly, up until only a few weeks ago, it was going to be released theatrically by Paramount Pictures, just as Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane were.

For various reasons, including rumoured troubles with the film, God Particle kept getting pushed back. Most recently, it had been slated to be released in theatres this past Friday, before being delayed to April 20.

Soon after, sources told The Hollywood Reporter that Netflix would step in to distribute the film. It only became more evident Sunday after tweets from, among others, filmmaker Ava DuVernay that God Particlewould officially become part of the Cloverfield franchise, as well as becoming one of the biggest experiments in Netflix’s history.

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Photo: Scott Garfield / Netflix

The big mover this week on the Digital Original charts is the new Netflix sci-fi series Altered Carbon, which sits at #6 in its first week on the chart in both markets.

After just a week back on the Overall TV chart in Australia, This Is Us has been replaced in the top 10 by Star Trek: Discovery.

Photo: Altered Carbon / Netflix

Sunday’s final of the Big Bash League ranks #1 way ahead of all other entires, with Big Bash semifinals the next-hottest TV sporting events.

Nine’s T20 between Australia and New Zealand also makes the chart.

The only other sport to crack the top five was the first game of the AFLW season shown last Friday on Fox Footy and Seven.

In non-sport, all three major TV realty franchises that launched last week made the chart, with TEN’s I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here ranking #1.

The only one-off special event to make the chart was Seven’s broadcast of the Grammy Awards.