97.3FM bolted away from the pack to led the field overall in the first official 2012 Nielsen radio ratings for Brisbane, ahead of 612 ABC, which picked up audience in all daylight shifts and convincingly won breakfast.

The ARN-owned 97.3 scored more than 14pc of the available audience, followed by 612 on almost 11pc, then Nova 106.9 (10.5), B105 (10.2) and Triple M (9.4). Then followed 4BC, 4KQ, Triple J and 4BH.

In the important breakfast market, Spencer Howson at ABC 612 won a whopping 15.1pc audience share, followed by 97.3's Robin Bailey, Terry Hansen and Bob Gallagher on 12.9pc, Nova's new blokey breakfast with Kip Wightman, Ash Bradnam and David "Luttsy" Lutteral on 10pc and B105's Labby, Stav Davidson and Abby Coleman on 9.7. They were followed by Triple M (which lost audience across the day), 4KQ, 4BC, Triple J and 4BH.

The combination of cricket and a new line-up saw 612ABC raise its audience in all shifts except evenings, where there was a small decline. 97.3 had huge gains across the day.

In Sydney, Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O's 2Day show dropped 1.1 points but was still the dominant commercial breakfast performer. It was soundly beaten by 2GB's Alan Jones and 702 ABC's Adam Spencer.

2Day, along with FoxFm in Melbourne, also dramatically lost share in its target 18-24 year old market (down from 20.3pc to 15.4 for 2Day) and in 25-39s. This is not good news for parent company Southern Cross Austereo, which has already taken a huge hit from an advertising boycott spurred by Sandilands' offensive on-air remarks about a female journalist last year.

That share of the young audience has directly transferred to 2Day's arch-rival Nova 969, although the breakfast audience seems to have gone to Triple J.

SC Austereo's Melbourne station FoxFM also had a poor survey. Both it and 2Day lost audience in the Drive shift to Nova's Meshel Laurie, Marty Sheargold and Tim Blackwell, but still managed to stay ahead of the commercial FM pack. In Brisbane, Nova lost Drive audience but still remained ahead of B105 and Triple M. 97.3FM won the Drive shift

Disclosure: Brett Debritz was a guest on two 612ABC panels during the ratings period.

Television viewers are creatures of habit. Occasionally television networks are able to break entrenched habits, but mostly they cannot. For example, viewers seem to like their shows to run for 30 minutes from 6pm to 7.30pm, and recent attempts to glue them to one program starting at 7pm on a weeknight and stretching to 8pm or beyond haven't fared well.

One sure way to harm a program, perhaps terminally, is to change its timeslot. Few shows can survive that -- although it seems a substantial number of people will watch Big Bang Theory no matter what time, or which station, it is on.

Channel Ten has provided a textbook example of how to ruin a popular show by not just changing its timeslot -- twice -- but by stretching its resources to breaking point, by doubling its length and adding an extra program on Sunday.

I am writing, of course, about The Project, which is now screening for an hour Monday to Friday, and 30 minutes on Sunday, at 6pm. It started life at 7pm, before moving to 6.30pm to replace the axed 6.30pm with George Negus (originally 6pm with George Negus).

On Sundays, The Project rates in the 300,000s -- the kind of figures that get expensive locally produced primetime shows axed very quickly under normal circumstances -- and on weeknights it generally attracts national viewing figures in the 400,000s. (The latest figure I have at the time of writing is 462,00 for Monday night.)

Let's rewind to this week last year, when The 7pm Project, as it then was, scored 536,000 viewers on its worst night and 720,000 on its best. Over five days, it averaged 660,000. That's not a huge figure for a night-time show, but it's half as well again as it's doing now.

That same week, Negus was scoring in the high 300,000s and the soon-to-be-axed and subsequently-much-derided Ben Elton Live from Planet Earth scored 491,000 on another network in a later timeslot.

Now, maybe viewers have tired of The Project, but my best guess is that they are sick of it being punted around the schedule, not fussed on getting an hour of it, and prefer their "straight" news from Seven and Nine at 6pm and their "current affairs" from Today Tonight or A Current Affair at 6.30pm.

That seems obvious to me, but then I'm not a highly paid television programmer.

PS Ashton Kutcher fans might want to note that a new Two and a Half Men episode rated 706,000 last night. This time last year, the Charlie Sheen version had 1,057,000 viewers. Who's winning?

Update In announcing half-year results that include a 12pc revenue fall for its television business, Ten CEO Jame Warburton said: "... our performance in the 5pm to 8pm timeslot, including The Project, this year has been pleasing."

The stock market ,a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/ten-tanks-after-profit-downgrade-20120222-1tni7.html" target="new">did not like this news.

As Channel Ten prepares to re-enter the breakfast television arena, I ask a question I've asked many times before: Why?

Putting together is a breakfast TV show, as Ten has done, is not only expensive, it would seem to be pointless -- simply because there are not enough viewers to go around the Ten, Seven, Nine and ABC offerings.

As the Sun-Herald reports today, morning shows have very small total audiences -- less than a fifth of the total population tune in at all, and then only for a matter of minutes per week.

Michael Lallo writes:

The Sunday Age commissioned a report from ratings provider OzTAM. It showed that more than 1 million Melburnians watched at least eight minutes of Sunrise, Today or ABC News Breakfast at least once last week. Still, this was dwarfed by the 3 million who heard at least eight minutes of breakfast radio. Nationally, 4 million Australians watched breakfast TV while 10 million listened to radio.

Additionally, morning viewers are not as engaged (because they are getting ready for the day, getting dressed, shouting at kids and preparing school lunches) as those watching prime-time shows. While advertisers don't pay as much for morning ads, they do pay enough, apparently, to sustain the shows and the salaries (and egos) of their stars.

But will that continue as times get tougher - meaning advertisers will start to re-examine the bang they're getting for their buck - and another slice is cut out of the commercial pie?

The Sun-Herald story appears to reach a different conclusion, but I can see no sensible reason for breakfast TV to be a ratings battleground.

Unlike with radio, it doesn't even set up an audience habit for the rest of the day. TV viewers dial-hop much more than radio listeners (despite attempts to thwart them from doing so by having programs overrun their timeslots).

One reason for this is that television has always been seen as an assemblage of different shows, while radio runs a continuous programming theme, be it news-talk or a particular type of music. Another, more practical, reason is that most radio receivers start up on the same station they were last tuned-in to, while many television sets no longer do.

Ten seems to be hitching the success of its Breakfast show to the acceptance of controversial New Zealand broadcaster Paul Henry, whose previous, and only, claim to fame is getting reprimanded for being both juvenile and racist in deliberately mispronouncing the name of an Indian official.

TV's a funny beast and there's a chance the show will work thanks to the PT Barnum observation that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the general public. Or, like The Bolt Report, it may remain on air for reasons other than the popular embrace.

Given the bizarre programming choices made by Ten in recent times (including its failed attempt to turn itself into a news and current affairs powerhouse, and its misguided mucking about with The Project), there's not a lot of cause for confidence that it will get this right.

One thing's for sure: all three stations are disproportionately focusing effort on this timeslot. At least one of the shows will either not exist, or will be significantly altered, by this time next year.

Mind you, having said that, one of the free-to-air networks may not exist in its current form by this time next year. But that's another story.

Some of you may have already seen this clip, but it's worth repeating because it's fun! You may have heard me talking about it on 612ABC.