HDTV Ratings: September 29-October 2

Round two of the Harry Potter versus Simon Cowell contest again went to The X Factor USA.

Friday night’s instalment of the talent quest averaged 9.6% of 25-54 year-olds compared with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’s 7.7%, 9% of 18-40 year-olds (vs 7.8%), 7.7% of 18-39 year-olds (vs 7.5%), and 13.2% of household shoppers with kids (vs 11.1%).

X Factor fared particularly well across the board given live coverage of the Rugby World Cup drew 11.3% of TV3’s 25-54 audience on Sky Sports 1 and 7.1% on Maori TV.

Thursday night’s episode won its second hour in all the major demographics but the first hour finished second opposite TV2’s Police Ten 7/RBT double-bill.

TV2’s 20/20 also bounced back against TV3’s Rove LA, which largely hovered around 6% of most key demos.

While that was down from the previous week’s premiere, it was still far better than ex-Rove duo Hamish and Andy could do in their Gap Year return on Saturday.

It drew 2.6%-3.1% of the viewers TV One, 2 and 3 target, with HD lead-in The ITM Fishing Show faring little better.

But Saturday was down across all the networks, with TV One’s Get Fresh With Al Brown drawing only 4.8%-8.5%.

TV One’s HD re-run of Until Proven Innocent didn’t average above 5%, but was competitive with TV3’s SD re-run of The Mummy Returns, while its HD Sunday movie, Young Victoria, was out-rated by TV2’s HD premiere of 2012.

Young Victoria was most popular with 25-54 year-olds (4.9%), and 2012 with household shoppers (8.3%).

The movies and network HD comedies Raising Hope, Mike & Molly and The Middle also struggled against live NRL coverage on Sky Sport 1, with the Warriors match averaging a 25-54 rating of 14.2%.