Tree-hugging becomes a serious marketing ploy. Chevs. Chevvies. Chevrolets. Big gas guzzling cars, right? Not if the marketing department has anything to do with it. Tree hugging seems to have become an integral part of their branding. Just have a look at the official Chevrolet website. Extensive Googling has been unable to yet locate any shrubhugging-centred advertising campaigns. — Christian Kerr

Last night’s TV ratings
The Winners: Well, three nights into summer and Seven’s early spurt ended with a poor result last night. Seven News was tops again with 1.277 million, followed by the 7pm ABC News (1.258 million), Nine’s repeat of 20 to 1 (1.247 million), Today Tonight (1.195 million), Nine News (1.121 million), A Current Affair (1.106 million), Ten’s repeat of NCIS (1.081 million) and the 7.30 Report (1.050 million).

The Losers: Seven after 7pm. Like Nine and Ten the night before, Seven peaked early in the night and faded. Sunrise Presents: Your Song at 7.30pm, 766,000. Turkey! Shark at 8.30pm, 677,000. It was a dud when Seven briefly brought it into primetime earlier in the year: it bombed then and it did again last night.

News & CA: Well, how are they going to explain this at Willoughby and Pyrmont today? The 7pm ABC News was the most watched news in both Sydney and Melbourne last night. Seven may have won nationally, but in Sydney it was: ABC, 375,000; Seven, 364,000 and Nine, 326,000. In Melbourne it was: ABC, 385,000; Nine, 382,000 and Seven, 323,000. Seven won the 6pm battle with Nine everywhere else. Today Tonight lost Melbourne and Brisbane but won nationally. And the 7.30 Report got to within 31,000 of ACA. Ten News averaged 810,000; the Late News/Sports Tonight, 414,000. Lateline, 343,000; Lateline Business, 180,000. SBS News, 150,000 at 6.30pm, 173,000 at 9.30pm. 7am Sunrise, 429,000; 7am Today 255,000.

The Stats: Nine won with a share of 29.3% from Ten with 24.4%, Seven with 21.4%, the ABC with 20.2% and SBS, 4.6%. Ten was again much weaker in Sydney and Brisbane than its national average, but it won Perth and Adelaide; Nine won Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. In regional areas WIN/NBN won for Nine with 30.4%, Southern Cross (Ten) was second with 25.4%, Prime/7/QLD was next with 23.0%, the ABC was on 16.3% and SBS was on 4.9%.

Glenn Dyer’s comments: Arrgghh… Summer TV, this year seems worse already. Only the ABC and SBS are having a go, as usual. Tonight the ABC has the final ep of The Librarians at 9.30pm and SBS has Newstopia at 10pm. I tried watching Shark last night to see if my harsh first impression was wrong. Nope, it wasn’t harsh enough. No wonder Foxtel is doing well: second most watched on Sunday night, third on Monday night, third last night in 6pm to 10.30pm. And yes, I know Foxtel has 130 channels and the FTAs only have one each, but Foxtel’s many channels are proving an attractive alternative to the slack summer programming from the FTA channels. Why do so many programs finish before Christmas when the networks make so much money from TV advertising?

Source: OzTAM, TV Network reports