Ratings Review: BARB Week Ending 24th September 2006 

11 October 2006 tbs.pm/231

Well, there are a few surprises coming out of the latest publicly viewable ratings.

On the channel side, we see that the joint highest rating channels right now, according to share of viewing are ITV2 and Sky Sports 1, both achieving a 2.4% share of viewing. However, the big difference comes in the weekly reach viewers,with ITV2 getting just over 14 million viewers every week. By contrast, Sky Sports 1 achieves a weekly reach of just over 6.1 million viewers.

Sky One is next on share of viewing with a 1.6% share, followed by ITV3 with 1.3% share and Sky Sports 2 with a 1.3% share. These are followed closely by BBC3 and CBeebies, both with a 1.1% share and E4 close behind them with a 1% share of viewing.

Outside of the premium sports channels, the ratings continue to show that general entertainment channels are still overall ratings winners.

The other general entertainment channels are doing well as well. ABC1 continues to show a general upward trend, with 0.4% share, the same as BBC4. Sky 2 and Sky 3 are holding their own well with 0.6% and 0.5% share respectively, Disney Channel are doing much better since they went to being a Primary channel from a Premium channel, with 0.7% share, helped in no small measure by a whopping 835,000 for their 6pm Friday showing of “High School Musical”, and even their +1 gets a decent 0.3% share. ITV4 is holding relatively steady at 0.5%, the same share as More4 gets. LivingTV is showing very credible ratings right now, with the main channel getting 0.8%, the +1 0.4% and LivingTV 2 getting 0.3%. Even UKTV Gold, which is down on it’s peak performance of around the 1.3% share range, maintains a decent 0.9%.

Channel 4 will be very happy right now with their channel ratings. Film4‘s recent change from premium to FTA, and arrival on Freeview has seen it’s ratings rise magnificently, with the channel getting a 0.8% share. When you look at each channel’s top 10 rated programmes, it’s not hard to see where the good performances come from. For E4, “Hollyoaks” and “Friends” make up 7 of the top 10 rated shows, with the number 1 rated show, a Tuesday “First Look” at “Hollyoaks”, scoring 456,000 viewers. Even the 10th rated show on the list, the Tuesday 8pm episode of “Friends”, scores 329,000 viewers.

Film 4‘s top rated film was their Sunday 9pm showing of “Last Of The Mohicans” starring Daniel Day Lewis, scoring a respectable 376,000 viewers, and More 4‘s top 10 is dominated by “Without a Trace” and “Deal Or No Deal”, which fill 7 place out of the 10. The Thursday night episode of “Without A Trace” tops the chart with 333,000 viewers.

In terms of individual programmes on the various multi and premium channels, there are some standout performances. I’ve already told you about Disney Channel‘s “High School Musical”. For BBC3, it was a Thursday night repeat of BBC1‘s “Eastenders”, which turns out to be the highest rating programme on the Multi-Channels that week, scoring 1.131 million viewers. Only ITV2‘s “Xtra Factor” on Saturday night scored over the million mark, with 1.051 million.

It definitely seems that short news updates are better in ratings terms than rolling news. Sky News gets a 0.5% share of viewing but in individual programme terms, only the Wednesday 11pm edition of “Sky News Tonight” scored more than 100,ooo viewers, 107,000 to be precise. Compare that, to BBC3‘s “60 Seconds” updates, which hold 2 spots in the channel’s top 10. The edition that split the Saturday film “Under Siege 2”, gets 621,000 viewers, whilst a Friday night bulleting leading into Eastenders, gets 508,000 viewers. Incidentally, neither the programme before “60 Seconds”, nor that Friday night “Eastenders” episode, make the Top 10, so it is difficult to say whether the bulletin had any kind of lead-in, and also difficult to say how many people held on to watch the repeat from BBC1.

“The Ryder Cup” was a definite ratings winner for Sky Sports 1, with the competition taking the top 5 places in the top 10, and 6 spots overall. With most of the weekend football being moved over to Sky Sports 2, that channel benefited ratings wise too. The “Super Sunday” game was the top rated game for the channel scoring 787,000 viewers. As an afternote, Sky Sports 3 continues to be relatively successful in terms of WWE wrestling. WWE programming takes up 6 spots out of the top 10, with only 2 live Super League games proving to be more popular. Unfortunately, it is impossible to compare WWE’s programming, with that of newest rival TNA, as The Wrestling Channel‘s ratings are not publicly available, and neither is Player‘s, which recently became Bravo 2. Of the three channels that show it, only EuroSport‘s individual programme ratings are publicly released, and TNA is not in their top 10 programmes. For Sky 1, “The Simpsons” continues to dominate the channel’s ratings, taking the top 6 spots and 8 of the top 10 overall.

Going back to channel ratings a moment, and it now seems there is clear water in the news channel race right now, with BBC News 24 clearly in the lead overall with a 0.7% share and a weekly reach of about 6.1 million viewers. Sky Sports News is a clear second place with 0.6% share and 5.9 million viewers weekly reach. Sky News lags behind it’s sports news counterpart with 0.5% share and 4.5 million viewers weekly reach. The only other news channel to be in the ratings is Fox News, which lags well behind the others with less than 0.1% share and only 263,000 viewers weekly reach.

A Transdiffusion Presentation

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Ian Beaumont Contact More by me

A member of the Transdiffusion Broadcasting System
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