TV Viewing Summary W/E 10/05/98

Well, it’s finally happened. After the long toil and labours of the script writers, the plane crash, the renaming of the show (and indeed the village they all live in), Emmerdale has finally triumphed and achieved a higher average audience this week than Eastenders. To be precise 11.81 million for Emmerdale, and only 11.55m for Eastenders. A true victory for the rural underdog.

All this has given ITV’s share of viewing a lift this week to 32.6% against BBC1’s share of 28.7%. Channel 5 begins to pick itself up again, taking its share back above the 4% mark, though still outshone by Channel 4 which has taken 9.5% this week.

The main event of the week in light entertainment, was of course the Eurovision Song Contest (9.62 million). As usual ‘our Tel’ did us proud, and we even gave our continental friends something to drool over with Ulrika joining the commentary team. Just about watchable, assuming one is under heavy sedation. But of course there was the added excitement this year of a Jewish Transexual claiming the prize. An event of truely Biblical proportions.

Drama sees the appearance of the new BBC1 Sunday night drama, Berkeley Square (7.90 million), and over on ITV Johns Nettles stars once again in Midsomer Murders (8.71 million). Top drama of the week (in the abscence of anything vaguely decent) is once again Where The Heart Is (10.92 million), with Ballykissangel a close second (10.12 million).

Channel 5 is truely making ground with all of its shows in the top ten attracting audiences at the one million mark and above. Chef School proves to be its most popular ‘non film’ show with 1.51 million viewers tuning in.

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