Big Breakfast Outrates GMTV

According to leaked ratings figures for this Monday (15/3), C4’s Big Breakfast was watched by more viewers at the crucial 8-8:30 slot than either of its competitors – GMTV and Breakfast News:

                
              No. of Viewers (m)                             
                 C4       GMTV    Breakfast News 
8:00 - 8:30am    1.7      1.5       1.3 

The GMTV figure is only half that of TV-am one year ago; whilst C4 has increased its figure from a base of 200,000.

GMTV does, however, continue to reach more viewers on a weekly basis than the Big Breakfast – 12m compared to 7.2m.

Commenting on the figures Peter McHugh, GMTV’s new programme director, said C4’s success would be short-lived and placed a large amount of C4’s success on the fact that it (C4) is not restricted by the same regulations as GMTV in terms of news coverage, and by the fact that it does not have to pay a levy to the Treasury. He added that this lack of restriction allowed the channel to get away with ‘what is just a children’s programme’.