There was also celebration for Blake and his comedy cohort Andy Lee with their program Hamish And Andy’s Gap Year also winning a Logie for Most Popular Light Entertainment Program.
Following the usual Red Carpet coverage, Gold Logie nominee Adam Hills was the first presenter on stage at Crown Palladium. Although Hills stressed that he was not hosting the show last night, his opening monologue showed that perhaps he was someone who should have been.
It was a long night, with Shaun Micallef appearing on screen after midnight to announce the winner of the Gold Logie – however controversy occurred behind the scenes, with the Herald Sun apparently reporting Blake’s victory online before it had been formally announced at the event itself and almost two hours before it appeared on air in the eastern states.
The newspaper said the mishap occurred during “live testing” of its iPad application and blamed the glitch on Google, claiming that the search engine had found the article before it had been published and hence perpetuated the headline online even after the Herald Sun had removed the article. Media reports say Google has refuted the claim, stating that it can not access material that has not been published.
The Nine Network claimed six Logies on the night, including Underbelly: Razor star Chelsie Preston Crayford winning the Graham Kennedy Award for Outstanding New Talent, Nine News’ coverage of the Queensland floods winning Most Outstanding News Coverage and Nine’s coverage of the NRL State Of Origin III winning Most Outstanding Sports Coverage.
Network Ten’s Bondi Rescue won again for Most Popular Factual Series, and the network’s coverage of the 2011 AFL Grand Final won Most Popular Sports Program. The network also ‘shared’ a Logie with ABC, with actress Asher Keddie winning the award for Most Popular Actress for her roles in Ten’s Offspring and ABC’s Paper Giants: The Birth Of Cleo.
ABC took away a number of awards, particularly among the industry-voted categories, for programs including The Slap, My Place, Spicks And Specks and Four Corners. Adam Hills was awarded the Silver Logie for Most Popular Presenter, following a year that saw Spicks And Specks wind up after seven years and the debut of Adam Hills In Gordon Street Tonight.
SBS won the Logie for Most Outstanding Documentary Series for its widely-acclaimed series Go Back To Where You Came From.
There were musical performances from UK teen band One Direction, the legendary Tony Bennett, Flo Rida and The Voice judges Seal and Delta Goodrem.
With the debut of The Voice and the four-hour Logies telecast, the Nine Network claimed a massive ratings victory, on a night where all three commercial networks rolled out the big guns to kick off the ratings after the Easter break.
Nine led the field on 37.2 per cent, followed by Seven (18.4%), Ten (13.4%), ABC1 (10.1%), SBS One (4.0%), 7mate (2.9%), One (2.6%), GO! (2.5%), GEM (2.3%), Eleven (2.1%), 7TWO (2.0%), ABC2 (0.9%), ABC3 (0.7%), ABC News 24 (0.6%) and SBS Two (0.4%).
The Voice topped the chart with 2.1 million viewers (OzTAM, 5 cities), with the TV Week Logie Awards occupying second and fourth spots (1.8m for the Red Carpet, 1.379 for the awards presentation). Seven’s series return of Dancing With The Stars scored 1.076 viewers and ranked sixth for the night, while Ten’s screening of the movie Avatar was well down the list on 553,000 viewers.
TV WEEK GOLD LOGIE – Most Popular Personality
Hamish Blake
TV WEEK SILVER LOGIE — Most Popular Actor
Hugh Sheridan (Packed To The Rafters, Channel Seven)
TV WEEK SILVER LOGIE — Most Popular Actress
Asher Keddie (Offspring, Network Ten / Paper Giants: The Birth Of Cleo, ABC1)
Adam Hills (pictured) (Spicks And Specks, ABC1/Adam Hills In Gordon St Tonight, ABC1)
MOST POPULAR NEW MALE TALENT
Steve Peacocke (Home And Away)
MOST POPULAR NEW FEMALE TALENT
Melissa Bergland (Winners & Losers Channel Seven)
MOST POPULAR DRAMA SERIES
Packed To The Rafters (Channel Seven)
MOST POPULAR LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAM
Hamish & Andy's Gap Year (Nine Network)
MOST POPULAR LIFESTYLE PROGRAM
Better Homes And Gardens (Channel Seven)
MOST POPULAR SPORTS PROGRAM
2011 AFL Grand Final (Network Ten)
MOST POPULAR REALITY PROGRAM
The Block (Nine Network)
MOST POPULAR FACTUAL PROGRAM
Bondi Rescue (Network Ten)
Industry-voted categories:
TV WEEK LOGIE AWARDS’ HALL OF FAME
Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum
TV WEEK SILVER LOGIE — Most Outstanding Drama Series, Miniseries or Telemovie
The Slap (ABC1)
Rob Carlton (pictured) (Paper Giants: The Birth Of Cleo, ABC1)
TV WEEK SILVER LOGIE — Most Outstanding Actress
Melissa George (The Slap, ABC1)
GRAHAM KENNEDY AWARD FOR MOST OUTSTANDING NEW TALENT
Chelsie Preston Crayford (Underbelly: Razor, Nine Network)
MOST OUTSTANDING NEWS COVERAGE
The Queensland Floods (Nine News, Nine Network)
MOST OUTSTANDING PUBLIC AFFAIRS REPORT
"A Bloody Business" (Four Corners/Sarah Ferguson, ABC1)
MOST OUTSTANDING LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAM
Spicks And Specks (ABC1)
MOST OUTSTANDING SPORTS COVERAGE
State Of Origin III (Nine Network)
My Place (ABC3)
MOST OUTSTANDING FACTUAL PROGRAM
Go Back To Where You Came From (SBS) (pictured)
Source: TV Week, Herald Sun, The Australian
Data © OzTAM Pty Limited 2012. The Data may not be reproduced, published or communicated (electronically or in hard copy) without the prior
written consent of OzTAM. Program performance and ranking information subject to change when not based on final program logs.
It doesn’t seem that long since we 
Ratings-wise, it was all about 
Network Ten launched its new digital channel 
Nine’s A Current Affair revisited some TV classics during the year, including 
Karl Stefanovic (pictured) won the 
Network Ten will hope for a better, more stable year with a new CEO and 
Nine had something of a late-year resurgence this year with The Block winning ratings in its new 7.00pm timeslot and Celebrity Apprentice also bringing in strong figures. The success of these will see Nine delve further into the reality genre in 2012 with another series of The Block, the return of Big Brother and an Australian version of singing contest The Voice.
In sport, Seven becomes the sole free-to-air broadcaster of 
The ground-breaking drama of the 1970s, Number 96 (pictured) will have its 40th anniversary commemorated with another DVD release of episodes – this time revisiting some of the few black-and-white episodes to still be in existence, as well the episodes surrounding the bomb-blast storyline of 1975.
No surprises for anyone to read that the Seven Network has come out as the overall winner in the 2011 ratings battle – its fifth annual win in a row.
It was a year where Seven could do little wrong, achieving a clean sweep of 40 overall prime-time wins out of 40 weeks, due to a strong early evening line-up of Seven News, Today Tonight and Home And Away and its reality portfolio – The Amazing Race: Australia, Dancing With The Stars (pictured), My Kitchen Rules, Australia’s Got Talent and a revamped The X Factor – all performing well giving the network a massive lead up to mid-evening. Thursday nights got a boost with Beauty And The Geek, and the long-running Better Homes And Gardens gave Seven a boost on Fridays.
For the Nine Network the year started confidently, with promises that the network would be the “home of comedy” in 2011. It was soon apparent, however, that the only ones laughing were the other networks. The supposed flagship of the new comedy line-up, Ben Elton Live From Planet Earth, was a spectacular dud, even leading to a public apology by Elton himself, and was axed after only three weeks. New US shows $#*! My Dad Says and Mike And Molly also failed.
The 
But while it was a year that Seven could do little wrong, for Network Ten it was a year where there was little they could get right. The network’s heavy investment in expanding its news and current affairs portfolio saw 6PM With George Negus (later 6.30) fail to maintain any audience traction up against the tabloid opposition, although the network should at least be credited for attempting to lift the bar in the standard of prime-time current affairs reporting and giving the show a fair run before finally 
The new show The Renovators (pictured) promised to do for home makeovers what MasterChef did with cooking – crank the challenges, production values and the budget to the hilt, and to saturate the schedule. The problem was that viewers didn’t take to The Renovators as they had come to adopt MasterChef, therefore dragging down Ten’s entire schedule. It will also be no coincidence that Nine’s revamped The Block made its debut just prior to The Renovators and hence stole much of its thunder.
Over at ABC ratings are not of primary concern but the ABC1 channel has scored some critical and ratings hits during the year. The two-part series 
Highlights for SBS during the year included Cadel Evans’ victory in the Tour de France (704,000), followed by documentary series 
But the biggest TV event of the year is one that fell outside of the official ratings survey. The 
Just days after the resounding ratings and critical success of ABC’s two-part mini-series Paper Giants: The Birth Of Cleo, the Nine Network has announced production of what is essentially a sequel.
The new series will be a production of Southern Star and John Edwards, the team behind Paper Giants, which told the story of the 1972 launch of groundbreaking women’s magazine Cleo by editor Ita Buttrose (played by Asher Keddie, pictured right) and with the support of Kerry Packer (Rob Carlton, pictured above). The performances of the cast, but Keddie and Carlton in particular, as well as the reconstruction of the early 1970s era have earned rave reviews and high ratings over its two nights on ABC1. The Sunday night debut was watched by 1.2 million viewers across the five capital cities, while the Monday conclusion was watched by 1.34 million – making it ABC’s highest rating program of the year to date. By Monday night the series also clocked up over 17,000 views on ABC’s online viewing portal ABC iView.
