BBC One’s biannual decision to give over its evening schedule to charity fundraising resulted in Comic Relief: The Big One dominating Friday night’s viewing.With comic sketches including Tony Blair tackling Catherine Tate’s unruly teenager Lauren, her foul mouthed Nan appearing on Deal Or No Deal, and another comic sing-a-long Peter Kay video, viewers choose to… Continue reading Red Nose Night Brings No Charity For BBC One’s Rivals

At the end of this month the fifth terrestrial channel will have been broadcasting for 10 years. During that time the landscape of British television has changed drastically.Sky Digital now dominates the pay-tv market, ITV Digital launched and collapsed, Ofcom replaced ITC and reality television is overtaking TV schedules around the world.During its early years,… Continue reading Five 10th Birthday – From Sunset Beach To Grey’s Anatomy

The decision to move popular US import drama Grey’s Anatomy to Sunday night hasn’t seen the show pick up any extra viewers for Five.The two-hour double bill opening for the second season attracted ratings of 746,000 and 768,000, down by nearly a million compared to 1.7 million for the opening episode of the first season.Channel… Continue reading Schedule Reshuffle Does No Favours For Five

This week sees the start of Friday Night Lights on ITV4, the latest in a somewhat dwindling line of US television imports.Just as it’s getting harder for UK heavyweight channels BBC One and ITV1 to come up with fresh, new, audience-grabbing programmes, it’s even tougher in the harsh world of US network TV.For the current… Continue reading US Imports – The Hits & Misses

ITV1 won the battle for peaktime Saturday night viewing, with Dancing On Ice proving to be the biggest ratings winner of the night.Saturday’s programme, which saw former Gladiators and TV-AM weathergirl Ulrika Jonsson voted off, attracted an average adult audience of 7.9 million.This was comfortably ahead of BBC1’s offerings of When Will I Be Famous… Continue reading ITV Has Ice Time With Saturday Viewing

Last night saw the return of high concept drama 24 to Sky One’s schedules, with CTU agent Jack Bauer returning from China to help save the US once again from terrorist threats.The season’s opening double bill attracted an average adult audience of 624,000 and 557,000 for the first and second episode respectively.This was comfortably ahead… Continue reading Jack’s Back To Defeat Cowell

It’s a widely accepted view that ITV has had a tough summer in 2006, but with the nights getting shorter comes the channel’s fight back.With Channel 4’s ratings juggernaut Big Brother firmly out of the way, ITV has started to wheel out its audience bankers. Old favourites such as X-Factor and Ant & Dec’s Saturday… Continue reading Saturday Night Viewing: BBC One Vs ITV1

Bad Girls, which according to press speculation may be axed by ITV, showed that it has some signs of life by comfortably winning its slot.The prison drama show attracted a peak of 4.6 million adult viewers (a 24.8% audience share) yesterday evening, with an average audience of 4.3 million adults (a 22.7% audience share) for… Continue reading Bad Girls Are Good For ITV

ITV enjoyed ratings success last night, bringing relief to its sagging schedules as almost 10 million football fans tuned in to its flagship ITV1 to watch Liverpool’s victory over Chelsea in the second leg semi-final of the UEFA Champions League.The match ended 1-0 to Liverpool, thanks to a Luis Garcia goal, drawing the largest audience… Continue reading ITV Clinches Champions League Ratings Victory

It seems that television viewers have never had so much choice. It also seems that they are being faced with longer and more cluttered TV junctions. So what steps should we take to address this for the benefit of viewers and advertisers? Can we keep viewers switched on to our ads or will they increasingly… Continue reading MRG Evening Meeting – Switch On Or Switch Off?