Good Weather Melts Sunday Viewing

The good seasonal weather had a damaging effect on ITV1’s strong Sunday night line-up, with viewing figures dropping by an average of 1.2 million adults between 7.30pm and 10pm.

Last night’s edition of Coronation Street, which saw Kym Marsh’s character Michelle become suspicious about her brother’s behaviour, was watched by 7.86 million adults (down from 8.68 million the previous Sunday).

Heartbeat spin-off The Royal only managed to attract an adult audience of 6.29 million, down 1.28 million on last week’s ratings. Next up was ITV1’s new comedy Kingdom which had a rating of 6.56 million, down a hefty 1.46 million viewers.

Despite the dips in rating figures ITV1 was still the most watched channel of night, comfortably beating BBC One’s best offering Victoria’s Empire (4.79 million viewers).

Elsewhere the return of the second (and probably final) series of Joey showed that UK viewers are no more in love with the Friends spin-off than our US cousins. The opening double bill achieved viewing figures of 504,000 and 585,000 respectively, well down from the four million plus figures the first series debuted with back in 2005.

Overnight data is available each morning in mediatel.co.uk’s TV Database, with all BARB registered subscribers able to view reports for terrestrial networks, ITV2 and Sky One.

ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.com BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk