ITV2 Achieves 6.6% Audience Share

The first run episode of Coronation Street, shown on ITV2 on Wednesday evening due to football being shown on ITV1, gained the highest audience yet achieved for the channel.

During the 7:30-8pm slot, the channel was the 6th most popular channel in all homes, attracting 673,000 viewers and peaking during the second half of the programme at 679,400. This gave ITV2 a 6.6% share which meant it outstripped Channel 5 and UK Gold. In multi-channel homes it also beat Channel 4 to be the 4th most watched channel and in cable homes it was the most watched after BBC1 and ITV1. ITV2 has four more first run episodes of Coronation Street planned for this autumn.

The ITV channels are still not carried on the Sky Digital platform, which could be detrimental to their potential audience share. ITV has promised that the situation will be resolved, and carriage secured, by the end of this year and this week gained the support of MP Chris Bryant, who has called for OFTEL to intervene (see MP Calls For End To Digital Deadlock).

ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.co.uk

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