TV Viewing Round Up – May 2000

Programmes May comes along and the viewers start melting away quicker than England’s back four. With a dearth of decent new programmes in the schedules, terrestrial television is beginning to resemble UK Gold with its output. In times of crisis programme makers always rely on the safe, tried and tested programmes to grab big audience ratings, so that goes some way to explaining Carol (I’m never on telly enough) Vorderman and Kirsty Young’s appearances on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (watched by 13.39 million people).

Des Lynam’s ill advised attempt at brand extension, the hosting of this year’s BAFTA Television Awards, proved that the so-called ‘housewives favourite’ should stick to sports presenting. This year 7.85 million people watched Des’s efforts, compared to 8.84 million last year when it was shown on BBC1 (although they did miss out on the part of the show when Leslie Ash called him a dirty old man).

Proving that there is probably no bandwagon that it won’t jump on, ITV takes a leaf out of Channel 5’s tacky book with its fly-on-the-wall documentary series Pleasure Island, which averaged audiences of around 7.2 million. Most of the viewers are probably gleaning maximum satisfaction from laughing at the sad individuals who agreed to take part in the series.

Only the soaps managed to consistently attract big audiences with Coronation Street managing to hold the top spots during May, despite the fact that it didn’t have any particularly gripping plotlines. All May episodes of the Mancunian drama serial attracted audiences between 10.3 and 14.8 million viewers, while Eastenders hovered around the 11-12 million mark.

Viewing After last month’s good year on year performance, this month ITV’s average hours and minutes continues the recent downward trend. Viewers seem to be spending less time to watching ‘the nation’s favourite channel’, with hour and minutes for May 2000 standing at seven hours and eight minutes (a fall of 6.5 percent on May 1999).

Channel 5 leads the way with the best yearly increase in average hours and minutes. During May 2000 the station was watched on average for one hour and twenty-five minutes (up 11.8 percent on May 1999). Viewing for non-terrestrial stations (Others) recorded the next best year on year increase. In May 2000 Others hours and minutes total rose by 8.4 percent to stand at four hours and twelve minutes.

Channel 5 has recorded its second best ever monthly share of viewing. The station’s monthly share of viewing was six percent during May, slightly behind September 1999’s figure of 6.37 percent.

Was it something I said? As reported in last month’s viewing round up (see TV Viewing Round Up – April 2000), BBC1’s share of viewing in the Ulster television region had been slipping so much, that it was in serious danger of being overtaken by Others as the region’s second most popular station. This month, however, Ulster rebounds to increase by 0.7 percentage points year on year (the only ITV franchise in which BBC1 increased its viewing share).

Ratings Only the big two, BBC1 and ITV, record drops in all their year on year peaktime audience rating figures. BBC1 suffered the most with drops between 1 and 2.4 percentage points across all audiences.

Channel 5 recorded the biggest increase in year on year rating figures of any station during May 2000. Peaktime ratings for Men rose by 0.8 percentage points on the previous year’s figures.

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