Seven’s night in regional and metro markets. Its 6pm news again had a big win overnight, losing Sydney narrowly to Nine, but winning Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. Nationally Seven News at 6pm won with 1.567 million viewers to 1.107 million for Nine News. That’s a winning margin of 460,000 for Seven (or a whacking great losing margin looking at it from Nine’s point of view). This again underlines the biggest hole Nine has to fix in its schedule next year.

First Contact started on SBS as its closing bang for the year. The first series was an eye opener two years ago. This one is more of the same. But will it change attitudes among the antediluvians accompanying Ray Martin? Nope? David Oldfield? Nope! First Contact’s second episode is tonight.

First Contact grabbed 645,000 national viewers (438,000 in the metros and 207,000 in the regions) on its main channel (601,000) and NITV (44,000 nationally). Two years ago it averaged 568,000 (399,000 in the metros and 169,000 in the regions), so the audience was up nicely.

The most watched TV programs in regional markets were: Seven News with 523,000, Home and Away with 494,000, Seven News/Today Tonight with 461,000, The Chase Australia at 5.30pm with 395,000 and First Dates UK had 318,000. First Dates UK’s second episode was last night and it is not a patch on the series put together by Seven here which was streets ahead as entertainment. Last night was just contrived fairy floss at times. — Click here to read Glenn Dyer’s TV Ratings.