Television Viewing Round-Up – July 2007

For the second month in a row, ITV1 was the only terrestrial channel to see a year on year rise in its viewing share in all homes.

All other terrestrial channels felt a slide in their share for the month in all homes, with BBC One seeing the greatest fall of almost three percentage points.

ITV1 held an 18.6% share for July 2007 in all homes, up 1.8 percentage points, despite a considerable boost in viewing for the end of the World Cup for the same month last year.

However, BBC One’s share dipped by 2.8 percentage points year on year for the month, presumably feeling some of the impact from its elevated viewing figures from the World Cup 2006 (see Viewers Choose BBC One In World Cup Final Face-Off).

The start of Dance X (see DanceX Makes A Triumphant Start), the Wimbledon final and the concert for Princess Diana did not impact enough to push the station’s share up, despite an average adult audience of 7.8 million at the start of the month for the concert (see A Right Royal Ratings Fest), but BBC One retained the highest share of the terrestrials in all homes at 21%.

A notable decline was also felt for Channel 4, which dropped 2.2 percentage points year on year for July, to take its share to 9.2%, in part no doubt due to the diminishing popularity of this year’s Big Brother.

Five also saw a drop in its share, of less than one percentage point, to take its share to a just over 5%, whilst BBC Two, which successfully began airing the new series Heroes (see Good Start For BBC Two’s Heroes), remained relatively static at 8.5%.

Elsewhere, other channels bolstered their share in all homes, rising by four percentage points year on year to take a more than 37.5% share in July 2007.

Both ITV1 and BBC Two saw their average weekly viewing share elevated for July year on year in digital homes, rising almost two percentage points and 0.2 percentage points respectively.

ITV1 now holds 16.8% of the share in digital homes, compared to just under 7% for BBC Two.

Meanwhile, BBC One lost two percentage points from its share year on year for the month. However, it remains the terrestrial channel with the largest share in digital homes, just shy of 19%.

Channel 4 declined more than 1.5 percentage points to leave its share at just over 8% for July, whilst Five fell less than 0.5 percentage points to 4.6%.

Other channels saw their share driven up by almost two percentage points, taking more than 44.5% of the share of viewing in digital homes for the month.

BBC One yet again retained its position as the most popular terrestrial channel in both Sky and Freeview homes, with a 22.3% share in Freeview homes and a 16% share in Sky homes in July.

Multichannel options continued their dominance, remaining the most popular channel choice in both Freeview and Sky homes. Viewing share of these digital channels is 52.9% in Sky homes and 35.3% in Freeview homes, with the difference due to the smaller channel choice available on Freeview.

ITV1, meanwhile, has an 18.9% share in Freeview homes and a 14.8% share in Sky homes.

Data to form this report can be found in the Television database on mediatel.co.uk within the “Weekly – Analysis by Platform” section. For any assistance please contact the helpdesk on 020 7439 7575.

BARB: www.barb.co.uk