Let's not beat about the bush.
Today Tonight look likely to continue to drag the channel down next year.
During the Olympics, with record numbers of Melburnians watching Seven, the 6pm news and abbreviated editions of Today Tonight shared the ratings glory, scoring their highest-ever figures. But only days later, Seven's news languished in fourth place in the early evening news race, behind Nine, the ABC and Ten. It had gone into the Games in second place. And Today Tonight lost the impetus provided by the Games, falling back to an average audience last week of only 327,000. Not only was that 116,000 behind A Current Affair on Nine, but it was below the increasingly healthy figures it captured in the month or two before the Games began.