Channel 5 achieved its highest monthly viewing figures for almost six years in January.
According to figures released by the broadcaster, Channel 5 delivered a 4.99% share of consolidated viewing throughout the month, which in addition to being its best January performance since 2007, was its highest monthly share of viewing since August 2009.
The surge was helped by the strongest Celebrity Big Brother audience since Channel 5 began broadcasting the show, with 21.1 million people having watched the show across the series and an average episodic audience of 3.13 million across the series – up 5% year on year.
For young adults, Celebrity Big Brother was the top-performing programme on British TV whilst it was on air.
Also performing well in January was Suspects, Channel 5’s first UK produced procedural drama for seven years, which received an average of over 1.1 million viewers in its run.
Between 2010 and 2013, Channel 5’s revenue increased 31%; and despite being blighted by the Omnicom/Opera dispute last year, which cost the channel around £25 million, revenues were still up just over 20% between 2010 and 2014.
Following the news that Channel 5 had poached the Football League highlights from the BBC, media journalist and Newsline columnist Dominic Mills said that its current programming strategy may be a sign that it has Channel 4 in its sights, and has decided that a more “varied and nuanced” strategy is the means by which it can overtake it.
“As far as I can tell from the figures, the strategy seems to be working,” writes Mills. “In peak time in 2014, its share of ABC1 adult impacts was up around 1.5%, and that of 16-34 adults up more than 5%.”
