Millions Enjoy Sporting Weekend

Roger Federer equalling sporting history and Lewis Hamilton narrowly missing out on winning his home Grand Prix held millions of television viewers’ attention yesterday afternoon.

BBC One’s Wimbledon 2007 coverage saw number one seed Federer avenge last month’s defeat to Rafael Nadal at the French Open, attracting an average adult audience of 4.5 million adult viewers.

Audiences peaked between 5.45pm and 6pm at over seven million adult viewers as the five-set classic drew to a close, with Federer holding-off the challenge of Nadal and wrapping up the final set 6-2.

Meanwhile, over on ITV1 F1: British Grand Prix attracted an average audience of 3.4 million adult viewers. The race saw British sensation Lewis Hamilton make a crucial pitstop error which probably cost him the win the fans were looking for. Coverage peaked at 4.5 million adult viewers between 2pm and 2.15pm.

Away from sport, the return of Lynda La Plante’s The Commander, starring Amanda Burton, performed well for ITV1. 6.2 million adults watched the first episode of the two-part story, comfortably beating its BBC One competition How We Built Britain, which had 4.3 million adult viewers.

Saturday’s Live Earth concerts, which started on BBC Two before switching to BBC One later in the evening, didn’t prove a huge success with the viewers.

The concerts barely attracted an audience above one million viewers to BBC Two, averaging just 788,000 before the switch to BBC One at 5.30pm.

The BBC one audience for Live Earth saw an average of 2.5 million adults watching between 5.30pm and 10.30pm.

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