Just horizontal last night, just horizontal — and I am talking about the 6th AACTA awards on Seven (mercifully screened 10 days after summer ratings started and the ending of the pretence of showing the audience programs they might find of interest at this time of year). It could only average a national audience of 599,000. The publicity generated from the red carpet, the “protest” of the sausages and whatever was said during the broadcast far outweighed the size of the audience. The rest of the night was snoringly weak.

And even on smaller audiences, Seven News again easily accounted for Nine News (even though Nine won Sydney and Melbourne narrowly and lost Brisbane narrowly as well) because of diabolically bad figures in Perth where Seven News averaged 202,000 and Nine News just 49,000. Nationally Seven’s 6pm News won with a average of 1.520 million, while Nine News was a massive 471,000 behind on 1.049 million.

The top five metro programs were: Seven News, 972,000; Seven News/Today Tonight, 964,000; Nine News 6.30, 774,000; Nine News, 770,000 and the 7pm ACA with 720,000. In the regions the top five were, Seven News, 548,000, Seven News/Today Tonight with 471,000, Home and Away was third with 433,000, Highway Patrol was fourth with 374,000 and the 5.30pm part of The Chase Australia was fifth with 368,000. All five were Seven programs. — Click here for Glenn Dyer’s TV Ratings.