The intensity of the news battle between Nine and Seven
shows no sign of easing. Last night Seven won nationally and in Sydney for the 6pm news slot. Nine News won in Melbourne and according to Nine Melbourne the result there was all that
matters – “Nine News has 173,000 more viewers, Seven News third behind the
ABC”.

Of course buried in Nine’s report and at the top of Seven’s
was the fact that seven won the prime time battle from Nine.

Seven’s win came on the back of the stalking episode of Home
and Away which was the most watched program
nationally with 1.776 million viewers.

Seven’s last milking of Dancing with the
Stars was second with 1.605 million across 90 minutes from
7.30pm to 9pm. Today Tonight was third with almost 1.6 million people and
290,000 ahead of A Current Affair.

And that remains the big worry for Nine. Nationally, Nine’s news
finished on 6,000 people behind Seven. Seven won basically because of a
solid
win in Sydney and a huge win in Perth where 252,000 people
watched Seven’s News, more than double the 118,000 who tuned into Nine.

But by the time Today Tonight had finished (and it ran over
by several minutes) that lead for Seven had ballooned. Much of that would have
been the combination of the overrun and people tuning into the last quarter
hour, but ACA’s continuing weakness is still giving Nine headaches. In Sydney
for example the gap in favour of TT was 128,000.

Nine’s repeat of CSI did well with 1.57 million
people (4th) and CSI New York
was 7th with 1.33 million people. Seven’s All Saints faded compared with
previous weeks to finish well out of the top ten with only 1.1 million people
watching.

Overall Seven won the night with 30.9% to Nine on 28.6%, Ten
with 21.1%, the ABC with 14.6% and SBS with 4.7%. Seven won Sydney
easily, Melbourne narrowly, and had good wins in
Adelaide and Perth. Nine won Brisbane.