Television Viewing Round-Up – April 2007

April saw viewing share in all TV homes fall for terrestrial broadcasters, with Channel 4 faring worst with a drop of over one percentage point year on year.

A similar pattern played out in digital homes as all terrestrial broadcasters lost share year on year.

Channel 4 lost the largest percentage share of viewing during April, dropping by 1.3 percentage points year on year.

ITV1 and BBC One also both lost viewing share year on year, falling by 0.8 percentage points each. April saw both channels go head to head with their similar West End Star search programmes, with the BBC’s search for a new Joseph regularly beating ITV’s Grease is the Word (see Joseph’s Technicolor Dreamcoat Smothers Greased Lightning).

Over 37% of viewing in all television homes is now to multichannel stations, following an increase of 4 percentage points year on year. The arguments between Virgin Media and BSkyB continued to escalate during the month with Virgin Media submitting papers to the High Court against BSkyB at the end of the month (see Virgin Media Submits Sky Complaints To High Court).

In a similar situation to all television home viewing, Channel 4 lost over 1 percentage point of viewing share in April year on year, dropping to 6.9% of all viewing in digital homes.

BBC One and ITV1 remained relatively static year on year, dropping just 0.2 percentage points and 0.1 percentage points respectively to maintain viewing shares of 19.3% and 16.9%.

Share of viewing of multichannel options increased in digital homes by over 2 percentage points year on year, reaching 45% share.

BBC1 continued to be the main terrestrial channel of choice in Freeview homes, with nearly 23% share of viewing, followed by ITV1 at 19.5%.

The same trend was true in Sky homes, with BBC commanding a 16.8% share, compared to ITV1’s 14.6% share.

Due to the larger channel choice available, multichannel options remained the most popular choice in both Freeview and Sky homes, with 54% of the viewing share in Sky homes dominated by satellite channels.

Data to form this report can be found in the Television database on mediatel.co.uk within the “Weekly – Analysis by Platform” section. For any assistance please contact the helpdesk on 020 7439 7575.

BARB: www.barb.co.uk