TV Market Round-Up – May 2007

May revenues fell year on year for all terrestrial channels, for the fourth month in a row, with Five seeing the largest dip at 7.5%.

ITV1’s revenues also dropped by over 7%, despite the channel showing both the Champions’ League Semi Final and Final during the month, both of which should have been a large draw for advertisers (see 9.2 Million Adults Watch Football Final).

Channel 4 only declined by 2.5% year on year, ending the month with around £62 million. The broadcaster decided to make no profit on voting calls to this year’s Big Brother series, following the poor PR around the celebrity version in January (see Channel 4 Will Not Profit From Big Brother Phone Votes).

GMTV, meanwhile, saw a downturn of 6.9% in its revenue year on year.

ITV Franchises

Central, at 16.0%, remains the ITV franchise area providing the majority of ITV1’s revenue, in much the same way as it did in the previous May.

Carlton saw the largest dip in share, of 0.4% points year on year, whilst Meridian saw the greatest increase, of 0.3% points year on year. In all, each franchise area remained relatively static year on year.

West Country once again provided the smallest share of revenue share, at 2.1%.

Most of ITV1’s CPTs declined during May for our featured audiences, with the exception being Housewives with Children, which rose by 1.8%.

Channel 4 saw all of its prices increase for our audiences year on year, with Housewives with Children increasing by over 13%, whilst Men only increased by 3.0%.

By comparison, all of Five’s featured prices decreased year on year, as Housewives with Children dropped by the greatest amount, at 13.2%.

ITV1 had a mixed month across our featured audiences for impacts. They rose for both Women and Housewives year on year, whilst Housewives with Children dipped by nearly 9%.

All impacts fell for Channel 4 across our audiences, between a 5.6% and 13.9% drop year on year.

On Five, Housewives with Children’s impacts increased by 6.6%. However other audiences dipped, including ABC1 Adults and Men, which declined by 6.1% and 4.9% respectively.

All our featured audiences increased by at least 12% year on year on satellite channels, while Total Broadcast was also up year on year, with Women peaking at 9.1% growth.

BARB: www.barb.co.uk