Tennis gives Seven the week. The Test cricket was more popular than the tennis when the two sports went head to head last week, but but with the cricket finishing around 8.30pm to 9pm Wednesday through Friday, and in the early evening Saturday night, the tennis won out. The tennis gave Seven a win for the week with 29.7% to 27.2% for Nine, Ten with 18.8%, the ABC with 16.6% and SBS with 7.6%. Nine won Sydney but Seven won Melbourne (where the tennis rated well), Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. Seven’s Saturday night audience for the tennis (mainly the Roger Federer and Venus Williams matches) from 7.30pm averaged 1.441 million people. Seven didn’t make any friends by showing the lacklustre UK soap, Heartbeat, instead of returning to the Federer match live, or on a short delay, after the news finished at 6.30pm. As it was the game was around 90 minutes delayed and there were a number of complaints to Seven about the decision. At midnight, 850,000 people were watching the first set of the Hewitt-Baghdatis game which had started 11 minutes earlier. At 2am around 450,000 were still watching the match. It went on to finish just after 4.30am when around 212,000 hardy souls were still watching. — Glenn Dyer

Last night’s TV ratings
The Winners: Just six programs with a million or more viewers. Seven News with 1.615 million people, was boosted by the tennis as a lead-in. Wild Vets at 6.30pm averaged 1.5421 million, the tennis from 7.30pm had 1.459 million and Whacked Out Sports (a pretty average clips show at best) on Seven at 7pm averaged 1.276 million. Nine News averaged 1.137 million and the 7pm ABC News, 1.032 million.

The Losers: Don’t Forget The Lyrics on Ten at 7.30pm, 651,000. Two first run movies, Ray on Ten with 749,000 and Million Dollar Baby on Nine with 762,000. Both first run on Free To Air TV, both Oscar winners. Viewers could not be bothered thanks to the tennis on Seven.

News & CA: Seven News again won nationally but the big winner in news on the day was Seven’s Sunrise: it averaged 493,000 thanks to the turn on of people who couldn’t last through the Hewitt match, or who fell asleep trying to do so. It’s another message to the lazy folk at Nine and the ABC that people will watch Sunday morning TV, even if it’s summer. Ten News, 792,000. SBS News, averaged 210,000.

The Stats: Seven won the night with 36.3% from Nine with 21.7%, Ten with 20.09%, the ABC with 15.6% and SBS with 6.4%. Seven won all five metro markets and the tennis was of course very popular in Melbourne where Seven’s share was 42.4%.

Glenn Dyer’s comments: Thankfully for Seven the tennis worked with an Aussie, Casey Dellacqua, in primetime. Tonight its our Lleyton, sleep deprived from his early dawn service yesterday. There will be much hand wringing and moaning about the unfairness of it all from the media, but who cares. It’s entertainment and they get paid an awful lot of money these days. Not much else, Top Gear on SBS at 7.30pm is the only other program worth looking at. If you don’t like tennis, it might be time for an early bed.

Source: OzTAM, TV Network reports