Phone-In Quiz Scandal Expos[[special-character:(17)]] Seen By Almost 3.8 Million

Panorama‘s exposé of the full extent of the television phone-in scandal drew almost 3.8 million adults on average to BBC One last night, giving the channel a 17% viewing share between 8.30pm and 9pm.

The programme revealed a string of rip-offs including GMTV’s embarrassing irregularities (see GMTV Claims It Had No Idea Of Apparent Phone-In Problems), following on from Dot Cotton’s apparent descent into madness in EastEnders, which attracted an average adult audience of more than 7.7 million (37%).

A Coronation Street double bill on ITV1 netted around 9.3 million (48.8%) and around nine million (40%) for each programme respectively, whilst it was a battle of the television veterans on BBC One and ITV1 from 9pm.

Dennis Waterman and Amanda Redman won the war with New Tricks on BBC One, which attracted more than 7.6 million adults to the channel, gaining a 33.3% viewing share. Meanwhile, Diamond Geezer David Jason managed around 3.6 million, or a 16.5% share.

Over on Channel 4, a typically heart wrenching new episode of the long-running US medical drama ER recorded an average adult audience of 1.4 million (8%) at 10pm, whilst Five’s Prison Break was watched by just over 1.3 million (7.6%).

Overnight data is available each morning in mediatel.co.uk’s TV Database, with all BARB registered subscribers able to view reports for terrestrial networks, ITV2 and Sky One.

BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.com Channel 4: 020 7396 4444 www.channel4.com Five: 020 7550 5555 www.five.tv