The Winners: Seven News was tops with 1.443 million people, with Today Tonight second with 1.361 million. Seven’s night session of the tennis was 3rd with 1.351 million and Nine News was 4th with 1.135 million. Home And Away was 5th with 1.104 million and A Current Affair was 6th with 1.060 million.

The Losers: How can you say that Superstars of Dance, Nine at 7.30pm , was a loser, even if 797,000 people watched? To see the star spangled chorus line tap their way through the Yankee Doodle Dandy number that Jimmy Cagney made his own was to be reminded why we have summer TV programming and why it was broadcast last night against a strong night’s line up at the tennis. It was simply awful. It’s a pity it drew viewers from Rex in Rome (243,000 at 7.30pm on SBS).

News & CA: Seven News and Today Tonight won everywhere, but having Roger Federer as a lead in for the news at 6pm was handy and helped Seven beat Nine in the hour. The 7pm ABC News averaged 954,000 and The 7.30 Report’s Summer edition averaged 667,000. Ten News averaged 720,000 people and the Late News/Sports Tonight averaged 184,000. SBS News at 6.30pm, 192,000, the late edition, 128,000. 7am Sunrise, 366,000, 7am Today, 315,000.

The Stats: Seven won the Free To air Battle and with Pay TV included. In the FTA battle it had a combined overnight share, 6pm to midnight, All People, of 39.3% from Nine with 29.2%, Ten with 13.4%, just in front of the ABC with 13.3% and SBS on 4.9%. Seven won all five metro markets and leads the week with a combined overnight share of 36.0% to 27.7% for Nine.

With Pay TV included and its myriad channels, Seven had a combined overnight share of 31/6%, with Nine on 23.4%, Pay TV with 17.2%, the ABC and Ten tied on 10.7% and SBS with 4.0%. Seven leads this battle for the week with 28.9%, from Nine with 22.3% and Pay TV with 17.0%. Free To Air TV had a total share for its 11 channels last night of 82.8%, Pay TV had a share of 17.2%.

In regional areas, Prime/7Qld won with 34.7%, from WIN/NBN with 30.3%, Southern Cross (Ten) with 14.8%, the ABC with 14.0% and SBS with 6.2%.

Digitally: Nine’s GO won with a share of 4.3% (Nine’s main channel was on 24.9%). 7TWO was second with 3.3% (Seven’s main channel was on 35.9%), ABC 2 was on 2.6% (ABC3, 0.5% and ABC1, 10.2%). Ten’s ONE was on 0.6%, Ten’s main channel was on 13.4%. ABS2 was on 0.5%, SBS ONE, 4.4%. The FTA digital channels had a share of 11.8% last night. GO leads the week with 3.4% share from 7TWO with 3.3%

Glenn Dyer’s comments: Seven won last night. Seven benefitted with more than 1.3 million people watching the evening session. Again people complained about Seven abandoning the tennis for the news, Today Tonight and Home And Away. The News and Today Tonight all drew more viewers last night than the tennis did. The sportsheads always ignore that significant fact as they bag the TV networks for bailing out of sports coverage early ahead of the 6pm news (although the matter of three balls in the Australian innings in Tuesday night’s ODI should have seen Nine continue for a minute or more).

Interestingly, TT averaged 1.361 million, but Home And Away averaged 1.104 million, meaning 257,000 people departed Seven around 7pm. But most returned for the tennis from 7.30 pm, which averaged a very solid 1.351 million from 7.30pm to around 10.30pm in what was the biggest audience so far of the titles for Seven.

TONIGHT: More tennis. The other channels have a mixture of fill in programs, repeats and not much else.

Source: OzTAM, TV Networks reports