Interactive Top Of The Pops Is A Hit

The BBC’s Top Of The Pops went interactive for the first time on Christmas Day drawing an audience of 4.7 million and achieving a 46% share of viewing.

The festive special, which was shown at 2pm on Christmas day, featured a series of interactive services allowing TOTP‘s digital viewers to sing along with their favourite hits, access interviews with stars and switch between live performances and pop videos.

Head of BBC Interactive TV, Scott Gronmark, said: “We all grew up miming to TOTP with a hairbrush. Now TOTP Interactive not only lets you decide how to watch the show, it makes singing along with your favourite pop stars even more fun.”

The BBC is claiming victory over ITV in the Christmas Day ratings battle with unofficial overnight figures from BARB showing that BBC1 had a 40.2% all hours share of viewing compared with 26% for ITV1.

According to the BBC, the Only Fools and Horses Christmas special was the most watched programme of the day with an audience of 20.3 million. This was followed by 8.30pm showing of EastEnders, which drew 14.6 million viewers and ITV1’s Coronation Street, with an audience of 12 million.

BBC1, which is also claiming to have beaten ITV1 in the annual ratings war (see BBC Claims Ratings Victory Over ITV), was criticised by ITV’s head of channels, David Liddiment, earlier in the year for being too focussed on ratings. Liddiment accused the BBC of pushing important public service programmes such as Panorama to the margins in order to make room for popular ratings winners such as Casualty and EastEnders (see GEITF 2001 MacTaggart Lecture).

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

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