Digital TV Round-Up – November 2001

November’s viewing figures from BARB show that as the winter schedules got underway, the shift in pulling power continues to move away from the traditional names as viewing diversifies.

Year on year, ITV1 has saw its share of viewing fall in November, from just under 30% share in 2000 to just over 25% this year. Recently ITV’s director of programmes, David Liddiment, admitted that BBC1 was proving a serious threat to ITV’s ratings (see Liddiment Defends Risk Taking) and the figures seem to bear this out, as during the same period, BBC1 saw its share of viewing in all homes increase by 7 percentage points, putting it ahead of ITV with a 27.5% share.

While the smaller terrestrial channels all saw modest increases in their share in November, as is often the case, it was the non-terrestrial channels which saw the biggest increase, their collective share of viewing in all homes growing from 17.7% to 20.4%.

In digital homes, the non-terrestrial, or “other” channels saw a decrease in their share of viewing year on year, from 48% to 46.4%. The main beneficiaries were BBC1, which grew its share from its November 2000 average of 18.5% to 19.2%, and Channel 5, which went from a 2.8% share to a 3.9% share. This means that the newest terrestrial channel is only a few percent behind BBC2 and Channel 4 in audience share in digital households.

BARB’s figures show that in ITV Digital homes, Channel 5 is even closer to catching its nearest rivals, its 5.2% share only 7 percentage points behind Channel 4 and closing in on BBC2’s 6.2% share.

Towards the end of November ITV finally agreed with Sky about a carriage deal for ITV1 and ITV2 on the Sky Digital platform (see Digital Truce For ITV And Sky). The effect of this on ITV1’s share of viewing in Sky homes will be clearer as the months progress, but month on month, ITV1’s share, which was 18.7% in both Sky and ITV Digital homes during October (see Digital Viewing Round-Up – October 2001), has increased to 19.4% in Sky Digital homes and 20.4 in ITV Digital homes.

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