ITV Wins Christmas Day Ratings Battle

ITV claimed victory in the Christmas day ratings battle for the second year running, taking a 40.2% average audience share during peak time (18:00-22:30). Coronation Street was its top programme, watched by 13.7m, while 11.1m tuned into the later edition of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?.

Despite spending £42m on its two-week Christmas line-up (see Newsline), including the rights to broadcast Titanic, the BBC fell behind its rival during peak time on the 25th December. The blockbuster failed to perform as expected; it was watched by an audience of 9.9m, making it the sixth most popular programme during the day.

BBC1 also took second and fifth place with two editions of Eastenders and The Royle Family came in at number ten, with an audience of 8.3m. Six of the top ten programmes throughout the day were broadcast on the ITV network, including two editions of Millionaire and the ITV News at 10.50pm.

The BBC was claiming outright victory across the day however. BBC1 took a 37.8% share of the audience for the entire day, compared to 35.1% across the ITV network.

The Corporation was also victorious on New Year’s Eve with 7 million – or an average 47% of the audience – tuning in to watch Dale Winton bring in the new year. On New Year’s Day however ITV was on top again, taking 40.6% of the peak-time audience, compared to just 30.2% from BBC1.

The Christmas period was a triumph for cable and satellite channels, which took a 10.9% share of the peak-time Christmas Day audience and 14.1% share on New Year’s Day.

BBC: 020 8743 8000 ITV: 020 7843 8000