The Winners: Seven’s The Force averaged 1.580 million at 8pm with 1.580 million, ahead of the 7.30pm program, Border Security, with 1.476 million. Bones was strong with 1.423 million at 8.30pm on Seven (and was very popular among female viewers). Sunday Night at 6.30pm averaged 1.298 million for Seven at 6.30pm; with Seven News on 1.293 million and 5th spot. 6th was Nine News with 1.217 million and 60 Minutes straggled into the list with 1.078 million and 7th. Castle at 9.30pm for Seven won the slot with 997,000, Nine’s 20 to 1 at 6.30pm averaged 930,000.

The Losers: Electric Dreams on Ten at 6.30pm: 488,000. A fairly fresh Simpsons episode or two would have done better. Nine’s movie, False Witness, at 8.30pm, 529,000. The turgid Miss Austen Regrets at 8.30pm on the ABC with 637,000 did better.

News & CA: Seven News again won nationally. Seven won Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. Nine won big in Melbourne (thanks Tiger Woods) and won in Adelaide. Nine News couldn’t get above 300,000 last night in Sydney (297,000). Seven won the battle with 338,000. The 7pm ABC News averaged 898,000 nationally and 266,000 in Sydney at 7pm. Ten News averaged 623,000. SBS News at 6.30pm averaged 146,000, Dateline at 8.30pm, 183,000. In the morning Today on Sunday averaged 363,000 and seemingly won. Weekend Sunrise averaged 348,000 from 8am. Landline on the ABC at Noon averaged 248,000; Insiders, 185,000 at 9am on the ABC; Inside Business at 10am, 119,000, Offsiders at 10.30am, 109,000. Meet The Press on Ten at 8am, 64,000.

The Stats: Seven won with a combined All People 6pm to Midnight share of 34.8% (32.2% a week ago), from Nine with 26.5% (26.8%), Ten with 19.9% (18.3%), the ABC with 14.3% (17.4%) and SBS with 4.6% (8.4%). Seven won all five metro markets. The win was again surprisingly large. Nine gave away the night completely with a dud movie at 8.30pm.

In regional markets, Prime/7Qld won with 31.8% from WIN/NBN with 25.4%, Southern Cross (Ten) with 20.6%, the ABC on 16.2% and SBS with 6.0%.

Digitally: Nine’s Go won with 5.30% (leaving Nine’s main channel with 21.20%), from 7TWO with 3.70% (Seven’s main channel was on 31.10%), ABC 2 with 0.90% (ABC 1 with 13.40%), Ten’s ONE with 0.80% (Ten’s main channel with 19.10%); SBS TWO with 0.20%, SBS ONE with 4.30%.

Glenn Dyer’s comments: Seven won last week with more viewers than the week before. Nine was second, daylight next. Nine won the digital network battle. Pay TV audience fell again with Fusion Strategy putting the fall at 12% in the broad 16 to 54 age groups, continuing the nasty drop in audience numbers in metro TV markets.

Tiger Woods’ audiences: Thursday, 186,000, Friday, 249,000, Saturday, 579,000, Sunday, 713,000. But it did nothing for Nine last night in ratings (the golf was over before 5pm with Tiger winning around 4.40pm). It worked for Nine, with a solid increase in numbers, but the advertisers during the telecast were not of high quality.

The Nine Network was up to its old tricks of changing programs at the last minute. Saturday evening it had a repeat of Happy Feet in early programs last week for a 7.30pm start. Come 7.30pm, no gleeful penguins, something else had been slotted in, a movie called Bring It On, all about American cheerleaders. Just over 600,000 viewers.

Poor Ten, did it really want Rove to reject it on prime time last night? But unlike Daryl Somers, Rove knows when it’s time to go. He’s now 40 and as the silly Nickelodeon kids awards showed on Friday night, he’s king of the kids; but way too old. There is surely something more to TV and life than that. So now he can devote his time to thinking up and running new projects and playing a radio star.

The 7pm Project is going to an hour for summer. When it returns at a half hour in 2010, Rove can make a couple of changes, such as making it really live at 7pm and sharpening its bite. Rove even denied Ten a last show extravaganza. I just wonder if Rove would have pulled the plug if hadn’t had the depressing Australian Idol as a lead in and instead had MasterChef.

Australian Idol again had less than a million viewers: its 924,000 wasn’t the best of lead-ins for what turned out to be the final Rove ever, with 760,000 and the shock announcement.

Collectively the five FTA digital channels averaged 10.7% of the audience in prime time 6 pm to midnight last night. That was the first time the channels have grabbed a double digit share and Nine’s Go, with 5.3%, out rated SBS totalling, 4.6% and main channel on 4.30%, for the second time since the digital channels started. 7Two topped 3% for the first time as well and seems to be grabbing audience from the other channels and from Pay TV because Seven’s main channel finished with a share above 31%, which would be high on a combined basis on any night these days.

TONIGHT: Elders on the ABC at pm with Andrew Denton back on the screen. FlashForward and Criminal Minds on Seven from 8.30pm, The Mentalist on Nine at 8.30pm, Good News Week on Ten at 8.30pm to 10pm, Jamie’s American Road Trip at 7.30pm might be worth a look. Ten has buried Medium at 11.20pm.

Source: OzTAM, TV Networks reports