The Winners: No cricket and Nine goes backwards, finishing a distant third behind Seven and the ABC. The Vicar of Dibley was tops on the ABC with 1.377 million, followed by Seven News (1.214 million), Air Crash Investigations (1.211 million), the 7pm ABC News (1.173 million) and Today Tonight (1.130 million). That means Nine News (993,000) and A Current Affair (978,000), dropped out of the million viewer club for the first time this year. The Worst Jobs in History Christmas edition averaged 860,000 on the ABC at 9.30pm. The repeat of a Touch of Frost on Seven, 898,000 and Ten’s The Starter Wife, 877,000. Newstopia down to 160,000 last night.

The Losers: Nine, not one program with a million or more viewers. When did that last happen? Never, except for during the Sydney Olympics. Just when you thought Nine couldn’t fall any further… Ten didn’t either, but they’re used to that happening. Nine isn’t.

News & CA: Seven News again won nationally and in every market but Melbourne. The ABC News was the No.1 news in Melbourne and No.2 in Sydney behind Seven (it was also No.2 nationally). Today Tonight reversed Tuesday’s loss to ACA and won Melbourne for a change, but lost Brisbane. Ten News averaged 761,000; the Late News/Sports Tonight, 400,000. The 7.30 Report averaged 889,000; the Late News, 403,000. Nightline, 264,000. SBS News, 143,000 at 6.30pm; 198,000 at 9.30pm. 7am Sunrise, 433,000; 7am Today, 261,000 and going nowhere.

The Stats: Seven won with a share of 29.1% from the ABC on 23.2%, Nine with 21.4%, Ten with 20.3% and SBS with 5.9%. Seven won all five metro markets. Nine leads the week 27.7% to $27.1%. In regional areas a win to Prime/7Qld with 28.5% from the ABC with 22.1%, WIN/NBN with 20.9%, Southern Cross (Ten) with 20.7% and SBS on 7.7%.

Glenn Dyer’s comments: Nine will still win the week because of the cricket tomorrow night, but last night shows just how empty the network’s programming vaults are. It may be talking up 2008 with its fleet of new programs and ideas, but it faces the unwelcome prospect of promoting them to its smallest audiences in years when there’s no cricket. Nine will have Test cricket in January, but that’s during the day and not much help at night. Ten is meandering along, keeping the schedule full and picking up a solid 20%-22% share most nights, down to 17% on poor nights. It knows all about those lows, its when it saves lots of money and makes small juicy returns on running repeats and writing revenue against them. Nine’s problem is that it has never been in this position where outside of cricket its audiences rival those on Ten some nights, but with a much higher cost structure, even now after all the cutting. If Seven got a 40% share of TV ads in the December half as some predict and Ten gets its 2006 share of 30.3% (it told the AGM yesterday it would exceed that) then Nine’s share has to fall. Seven will probably get around 37% (35.9% in the 2006 December half), meaning that Nine will just top Ten, but be at its lowest level for the second half of the year.

Source: OzTAM, TV Network reports