EastEnders Shooting Climax Pulls Peak Audience Of Nearly 20m

The climax of EastEnder’s Who Shot Phil Mitchell? storyline attracted almost 20m viewers to BBC1 last night. Unofficial overnights put the average audience at 17.9m, with a peak of 19.8m occurring halfway through the 40 minute programme. The audience was on average 2m larger than for the episode when Phil was actually shot (see Phil’s Shooting Blows ITV’s Millionaire Out Of The Water).

The shooting storyline has been among the factors which has enabled BBC1 to catch and even overtake ITV rival Coronation Street in terms of audience sizes in recent months. It is thought that Granada is suffering from the loss of key Coronation Street writers.

BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk

Subscribers can access the Television database by selecting “Television” from the drop-down box at the top of this page.