English victory brings 11.2m to ITV1

England's victory over France in the rugby union World Cup brought a bumper audience to ITV1 with 11.2m (47%) watching the match from 8pm.

The initial coverage, which began at 7.45pm, started off modestly with 5.2m (24.8%) but almost doubled its audience within 15 minutes, with 10.2m (44.3%) watching at 8pm. The closely fought game, which England eventually won 14-9, managed to hit a high of 12.1m (50.3%) at 9.30pm.

ITV1 audience was, not surprisingly, well above the channel's slot average for the year so far of 5.2m (24.4%).

The commercial network's coverage of the semi-final comprehensively dominated peaktime viewing on Saturday (13 October) as BBC1's normally robust line-up took a knock.

Robin Hood at 7.30pm fell by 800,0000 viewers from last week's start of the second series with 5.1m (23.3%) in the same slot. The corporation's audience was the same at 8.15pm with 5.1m (21.8%) watching the national lottery show In It to Win It, a drop of 1.1m viewers compared to the previous week.

BBC1's Casualty at 9.05pm was also down by 1.1m viewers week-on-week with 5.4m (25%) for 50 minutes.

BBC1 was in a much stronger position at 6.15pm thanks to its blockbuster Strictly Come Dancing bringing in a hefty 8.2m (39.6%). In the final 15 minutes of the talent show 9.3m (42.5%) were watching.

ITV1's Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway was no match for the corporation with 5.3m (25.7%) watching at 6.25pm.

Tough times

The smaller terrestrial channels found the going tough while the rugby was on with BBC2, Channel 4 and Five barely managing to scrape past the million mark for the majority of peaktime.

BBC2's repeat of Porridge at 8pm managed 1.4m (6.2%) for half an hour and its film A Beautiful Mind at 8.30pm managed just 900,000 (3.9%).

The finale of C4's Deadliest Catch at 8.05pm had 1.1m (4.6%) for an hour and a re-run of the musical Moulin Rouge at 9.05pm had 900,000 (4.5%).

Five didn't have much to celebrate either. NCIS at 8.10pm had 1.1m (4.7%) with 1.2m (4.9%) watching a repeat of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation at 9.05pm.

England does it again

While ITV1 may have had a stranglehold over the viewers in peaktime, daytime firmly belonged to BBC1 thanks to live coverage of England Euro 2008 qualifying game.

The national side's 3-0 victory over Estonia in the Group E game was the viewers' choice from 2.30pm with a sizeable 6m (47.9%) watching the entire coverage between 2.30pm and 5.15pm. The game, which kicked off at 3pm, grew from 5.7m (51%) to an impressive 7.7m (53.4%) at 4.30pm. Overall the game averaged a strong 6.7m (52.3%).

BBC1 has averaged an audience of 2.2m (22.4%) between 2.30pm and 5.15pm so far this year.

As with both the rugby and football matches the Barb viewing figures only measure 'at home' viewing and do not take into account those people who will have watched the games in a pub.

At the time of England's game against Estonia no other channel even came remotely close to BBC1.

The next most popular channel at the time was ITV1. The film Junior at 3pm interested just 1m (8.2%) for nearly two hours.

All hours shares for Saturday 13 October 2007: BBC1 – 29.8%, ITV1 – 22.4%, BBC2 – 5.2%, C4 – 4.9%, Five – 4.4%, multichannel – 33.4%.

Peaktime (6pm to 10.30pm) shares: ITV1 – 35.2%, BBC1 – 27.5%, Five – 5%, C4 - 4.5%, BBC2 – 4.5%, multichannel – 22.8%.

Source: Broadcastnow.co.uk