Erosion

This time a year ago - Merlin was riding high as the big new hit drama with 1.3 million viewers providing a big lead-in to the brand new Masterchef.

A year later - Masterchef is riding higher than ever - but Merlin is in the gutter - kicked to the curb by Mike Munro and Nine's factuals.

Nine's idea of sticking their Customs program on Sunday nights at 6.30 is a genius move sapping the heat out of Border Security (although BS still does pretty well for what was a rerun) there was a time when these Nationalist Paranoia showcases polled 2 million an outing - but that was the old television, before multichannelling, abundant PAY TV and internet enabled everything!

Underbelly returned to good numbers but far short of their 2009 form, still it's in no danger of cancellation - but perhaps budget cuts on future seasons if the numbers continue to soften

If House were on Seven it would have shipped to 10.30 last year - if it were on Nine, we'd only see it at Summertime, because it's on Ten - they persist with the 9.30 timeslot because they have no 10.30 slots, have nothing to replace it (so they can't wait until summer) and their multichannel is an expensive experiment in sports programming that no-one watches.