House Rules broken but Our Queen rules on HOUSE Rules did not rule and Celebrity Splash sank to the bottom in an ordinary Thursday nights TV viewing. Viewers switched off, or switched over, on what has become a weak Thursday night on the primary channels: so weak that both the Opposition Leader's budget reply speech and the following ABC1 news special ranked among the top 20 shows for the night (with 609,000 and 647,000 viewers respectively, according to preliminary OzTAM data for the five capital cities). Seven's confidence in its new renovation program House Rules has been sorely tested in its launch week and last night it fell again despite little competition other than The Block Sky High. Nine's reno show is down slightly on previous performances but still cracked the million mark (1.041 million) and is damaging House Rules, which with 687,000 viewers can't afford to be an anchor tenant in Seven's schedule for much longer. Its antecedents, despite slow starts, both performed better at launch, with the first episode of My Restaurant Rules in 2004 averaging 858,000 viewers and the first episode of My Kitchen Rules in 2010 grabbing 1.12 million viewers. The much-hyped Celebrity Splash concluded in a dire timeslot and with gallons more bad press than it deserved. Its 650,000 viewers for the finale - won by cricketer Andrew Symonds, for what it's worth - was a disappointing return after its first two elongated episodes averaged 1.31 million and 1.05 million. Nine won the night with a 23.0 per cent share in all people ahead of Seven's 19.7 per cent, ABC1"s 14.2 per cent and Ten's 12.9 per cent. Audiences drifted, though, with SBS One scoring a 5.6 per cent share and GO! a 4.5 per cent share thanks to two episodes of The Big Bang Theory scoring more than 340,000 viewers each. And Neighbours attracted one of its better audiences of the year on Eleven (338,000). The 20th anniversary of the AFL Footy Show was celebrated with its second best audience of the year (356,000) viewers while the NRL version was up in Sydney and Brisbane. And the fascination with the British monarchy was clear on ABC1 where the second part of the documentary series Our Queen averaged 903,000 viewers, not only the best audience in that time slot for the year for the public broadcaster but one of the best non-news audiences for ABC1 all year.