The Winners: Seven News was tops (less dominant than Monday and Tuesday nights) with 1.395 million viewers. Criminal Minds on Seven at 8.30pm averaged 1.379 million, Today Tonight was 3rd and averaged 1.273 million for Seven at 6.30pm and the Two And A Half Men episode at 7.30pm averaged 1.246 million at 7.30pm. 5th was Home and Away with 1.240 million, 6th was Air Crash Investigations on Seven at 7.30pm with 1.140 million and 7th was Nine News with 1.130 million viewers. The 7pm repeat of Two and a Half Men averaged 1.088 million, and 9th was the 7pm ABC News with 1.082 million viewers. A Current Affair was 10th with 1.058 million, Ten’s House was next with 1.020 million and the Grand Final of The New Inventors from 8pm to 9pm averaged 1.009 million. Nine’s Big Bang Theory at 8pm averaged 1,.008 million. (Out Of The Blue, 378,000 at 10.30pm).

The Losers: Christmas With The Kranks on Nine at 8.30pm, 692,000. It’s so easy to predict with B class movies. The Unit at 9.30pm for Seven, 839,000, the two episodes of Futurama on Ten from 7.30pm, 650,000 for episode one, 684,000 for episode two.

News & CA: Seven News again won nationally and in every market but Melbourne as did Today Tonight. Nine News in Sydney with 296,000 viewers finished behind the 7pm ABC News in the rankings which had 357,000 viewers. Seven News had 366,000 viewers at 6 pm in Sydney. The 7.30 Report, 835,000. Lateline, 327,000, Lateline Business, 181,000. Ten News 853,000. The late News/Sports Tonight: 259,000. SBS News at 6.30pm, 178,000, the 9.30pm edition, 168,000. Newstopia, 142,000. 7am Sunrise, 382,000, 7am Today, 322,000.

The Stats: Seven won All People 6pm to midnight with 31.1% (28.5%) from Ten with 24.5% (26.4%), with Ten third with 21.5% (21.6%), the ABC with 18.4% (18.8%) and SBS 4,4% 94.7%). Seven won all five metro centres and leads the week 30.8% to 25.6% for Nine. In regional areas Prime/7Qld won with 29.8%, with WIN/NBN on 24.2%, Southern Cross (Ten) with 21.5%, the ABC with 18.7% and SBS with 5.8%.

Glenn Dyer’s comments TV viewing is staggering towards end of ratings Saturday night, judging by what was available on TV last night. It was a desperate struggle to stay awake, except for Newstopia at 10pm, and the Grand Final of The New Inventors from 8pm.

Tonight its more of the same. But you do have to wonder about Nine. They slot a Foxtel buy in called Crime Investigations Australia into the 8.30pm slot tonight, it runs to 9.45pm, so RPA starts 15 minutes late for its 2008 final and won’t get the viewers it deserves.

Seven has The Amazing Race, Life After People at 7.30pm for 90 minutes and Bones at 10pm. Inspector Rex is repeated at 7.30pm on SBS. Getaway is its final episode on Nine at 7.30pm. Ten has two hours of Law And Order programs from 8.30pm. Now I hear that Nine has committed to a new drama series called Rescue next year, hence the decision to terminate The Strip (it will be 13 eps mini-series because that maximises Australian content drama points).

Seven is planning a big revamp of All Saints for next year, with the series to be rebuilt around John Waters and not John Howard. This will be its last revamp and is designed to last into 2010.

And in the could it be true category: Ten has been missing Thank God You’re Here this year. It is replaying all 18 or so repeats at 6.30pm Sunday nights and getting fair to average figures, but around half the 1.8 million it got for the first run eps in 2006 and 2007. Did you know that Ten claimed drama points for the content rules for Thank God You’re Here? Why, because people “acted” in skits (hammed it up more like it).

It was a comedy program not a drama. Ten is repeating it now because it obviously needs the drama points to keep up to quota.

Source: OzTAM, TV Networks reports.