National TV Awards scoops 6.9m for ITV1

ITV1’s coverage of the National Television Awards picked up 6.9m viewers (30.8%) last night, beating the audience for last year’s show.
The two hour awards ceremony, hosted by Trevor McDonald, started at 8pm and managed to hit an audience high of 7.2m (34.2%) at 10pm.


It outperformed last year’s audience by 200,000 viewers. The event on 1 November 2006 appealed to 6.7m (29.6%) over two and a half hours. The ceremony in 2005 won over 7.1m (31.4%).

The highest audience for the annual event in recent years was in 2002 when 8m (34.6%) tuned in.

The audience figure for the National Television Awards was easily above ITV1’s slot average for the year so far of 4.6m (20.8%).

Strong line-up

The event from the Royal Albert Hall was just one part of a strong peaktime performance from the commercial network with soaps also featuring heavily.

David Platt’s plans to sabotage his sister’s wedding in Coronation Street came to head at 7.30pm. An hour long special edition of the soap attracted 10.7m viewers (49%) with the audience hitting 11m (49.5%) at 8pm.

Despite the drama comfortably clearing the 10m mark last night’s edition was some way off being the most watched episode this year. 12.3m people (52.1%) watched Corrie on 15 January in a 7.30pm slot.

The two episodes on Monday (29 October) gained 11.5m (48.2%) and 11.2m (45%) respectively at 7.30pm and 8.30pm.

So far this year Coronation Street has averaged 9.6m (44.4%), enough to keep its position as the nation’s most popular TV programme.

ITV1 dominates

Throughout peaktime, between 6pm and 10.30pm, ITV1 had a stranglehold over viewing with a share of 34%. Its nearest rival, BBC1, had to settle for just 20.4% over the same time period.

Between 7pm and 10.30pm the commercial network gained a share of 37%, its best performance at this time on a Wednesday since May 2006.

BBC1’s line up failed to break the 5m mark throughout peaktime.

The final part of the current series of its consumer affairs programme Rogue Traders took 4.9m (21.8%). That was followed by The Nature of Britain at 9pm on 4.8m (20.8%).

Earlier at 8pm, Watchdog gained just 3.5m (15.6%), the lowest audience share of its current run this year.

The remaining terrestrial channels struggled to make an impression with the viewers too.

Britz blitz

Channel 4 launched its big two-part drama Britz at 9pm.

The opening episode, which lasted for over two hours, averaged a largely steady 1.2m (5.9%). Over the first hour it maintained a solid 1.3m although its audience slowly trickled down to 900,000 (7.1%) in the final 15 minutes at 11pm.

For the year to date the channel has averaged 2.4m (12.3%) in the slot.

BBC2 ratings banker Heroes largely remained immune to ITV1’s onslaught with the US drama taking 2.4m (10.1%) at 9pm, a drop of just 100,000 on the previous week.

BBC2’s audience fell away after that though. Heroes Unmasked at 9.45pm had 1.7m (7.5%) for 15 minutes. Its audience fell even further at 10pm with a repeat of Never Mind the Buzzcocks on just 1.3m (6%).

Five also struggled in peaktime. How to Have Sex after Marriage only gained 700,000 (3.2%) for an hour at 9pm. It’s Harrison Ford film Hollywood Homicide had 700,000 (5.4%) at 10pm.

All hours shares for Wednesday 31 October 2007: ITV1 – 27.4%, BBC1 – 21.1%, BBC2 – 8.6%, C4 – 8%, Five – 4.2%, multichannel – 30.7%.

Peaktime (6pm to 10.30pm) shares: ITV1 – 34%, BBC1 – 20.4%, BBC2 – 9.3%, C4 – 6.3%, Five – 3.1%, multichannel – 26.9%.


Source: Broadcast Now