ITV has revealed that viewing share for the ITV family of channels has continued to grow on all the main platforms over the last six months, with digital terrestrial television enjoying the greatest growth, rising by 1.9 share points and accounting for 27.8% of all viewing over that period.
In the company’s annual general meeting, ITV was shown to be the most popular channel in peak time, broadcasting the top 370 commercial programmes in 2005. ITV soaps continue to dominate the genre, with
Coronation Street, consistently the most popular programme on UK television, attracting an average audience of 12 million viewers and a 50.9% share.
ITV has broadcast seven out of the top ten dramas this year, with Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway and the Paul O’Grady show topping the ratings.
Commenting on the broadcaster’s performance, Sir Peter Burt, chairman of ITV said: “Over 2004 we achieved our twin objectives of improving current business and laying the foundations for our future growth.”
Burt continued: “We have completed the merger, delivered ahead of schedule the £120 million per annum of cost savings that we identified and have achieved strong growth in the business with 2004 operating profit up by 49%.”
ITV estimates that, over the six months to June, it’s overall advertising revenue will increase by 3% year on year, with the combined advertising revenue for ITV1, ITV2 and ITV3 over that period forecast to be broadly in line with last year.
Charles Allen, chief executive of ITV said: “Our success in growing our audiences is the result of planning and scheduling our new channels and leveraging the resources of our unparalleled production business and programme library. We will continue this work and will launch another new channel, ITV4, later in the year aimed at a male demographic.”
ITV revealed a strong line up for autumn, aiming to bring ITV1 an upmarket ABC1 audience profile, with new programmes such as All about George with Rick Mayall and Vincent with Ray Winstone hoping to attract new audiences.
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