11.02 Million Watch Extra Episode Of Eastenders

BBC1’s decision to add an extra episode of Eastenders during the Olympics, looks to have been a success. 11.02 million people tuned in to watch the episode shown on Friday night at 8.30pm, which is very good for the summer. The first Monday night episode of Eastenders shown on April 11th 1994 attracted 12.56 million viewers.

Along with the success of the extra episode of Eastenders , the BBC’s coverage of the 26th Modern Day Olympics has also performed well. The highest rating programme of the week being Sunday’s edition of the Essential Olympics which was watched by 7.92 million viewers. The programme shown at 7.30pm featured coverage of the Men’s and Women’s 100m finals, including Linford Christie’s disqualification from the Men’s final. The finals had already been shown live 17 and half hours earlier and been watched by 4.53 million sports insomniacs.

Channel 4’s Merseyside soap opera Brookside, which had been moved from its usual Tuesday and Friday times of 8.30pm to 8.00pm for the duration of the Olympics, has lost around a million of its viewers. It dropped to an average of 2.7 million viewers for the two episodes. The Wednesday edition which is usually shown at 8.00pm kept its usual 4 million audience.

Average television viewing for the week ending July 28th rose by 12.83% for all individuals over the age of 4 when compared to figures for the same week last year. In Astra Panel homes viewing for all channels has also risen on last year’s figures, this time by 15.9%.

For full BARB weekly viewing data, subscribers can access the new MediaTel Television Database