Television Viewing Round-Up – November 2006

November saw viewing shares fall year on year across most terrestrial channels, with ITV1 seeing a dip of almost 2 percentage points.

In digital homes, Channel 4 saw the greatest change in viewing share, with an increase of 0.6 percentage points.

ITV1 saw its viewing share fall year on year in November by 1.9 percentage points, although with the arrival of Michael Grade at the end of the month things are looking up for the broadcaster (see BBC Chairman Jumps Ship To ITV Top Job).

BBC One also saw its viewing share fall, dropping 1.2 percentage points year on year, although the channel remained in the number one spot in terms of viewing share in all TV homes, with 22.2% of all viewing.

Channel 4 remained static year on year with 8.8% of all viewing, whilst BBC Two increased by 0.8 percentage points year on year.

Meanwhile, multichannel households increased by 4.4 percentage points year on year.

ITV1 and BBC One also lost viewing share in digital homes year on year, dipping by 0.5 and 0.2 percentage points respectively.

Channel 4 saw the greatest increase, with its viewing share growing by 0.6 percentage points year on year, ending November with a 7.2% share. In November the broadcaster announced that it would be launching an on-demand service giving users up to 30 days to access repeats of shows such as Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and Hollyoaks (see Channel 4 To Launch On-Demand Service).

Five’s viewing share dipped slightly in November, by 0.4 percentage points year on year, giving it a 4.5% share of viewing.

BBC1 remained the most popular of the terrestrial channels in Freeview homes throughout November, claiming 24.0% of viewing, whilst ITV1 proved the most popular in Sky homes, with 17.8% of viewing.

Multichannel continues to be the most popular channel option, with viewing share of these digital channels at 50.6% in Sky homes and 30.1% in Freeview homes, with the difference due to the smaller channel choice available on Freeview.

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