ITV1 has suffered a drop in audience share over the first two months of 2005, loosing 10% of viewers year on year.
New audience figures reveal that ITV’s average audience share of 16-35 year olds in January and February 2005 was 17.4%, compared to 22.7% in 2004, a slip of 5.3%.
Overall viewing figures for the last two months show ITV1’s January share to be down from 24.6% in the same period in 2004 to 22.1% in 2005, a slip of 2.5%. This downwards trend is echoed in February’s figures with a 22.3% share dropping from 24.6%, compared to the same month in 2004.
Overall television viewing figures slipped slightly towards the end of 2004, with average daily hours of viewing dropping by 0.06% to 3.71 compared to 2003 at 3.73, according to the latest reports from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) (see IPA Reports Over Half Of UK Homes Have Digital TV).
According to the IPA, ITV’s audience share in Q4 increased to 23.3% at the expense of the BBC, whose share declined to 23.8%. Channel 4 also saw a fall in audience share for the last quarter of 2004, dropping to 9%.
Channel 4, however started 2005 on a high, announcing its strongest January performance for five years, showing a 10.3% rise in audience share for the first month of 2005, an 11% increase on the same period in 2003 (see Channel 4 Reports Record Performance In Five Years).
ITV’s ratings for the first week of March look more optimistic, with the broadcaster revealing that last week it had achieved its second highest peak-time share of the year so far, with 31.3%.
Across last week, ITV1, ITV2 and ITV3 collectively averaged a 23.63% share in multi-channel homes for 09:25-29:59, resulting in the best ITV aggregate share across the year to date.
For all-time viewing between 09:25-29:59, ITV1 was the only terrestrial channel to record an increase in audience figures, enjoying its highest share since December 2004 with 23.4%.
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