Obama’s inauguration attracts 7 million viewers

BBC One’s live coverage of President Obama: The Inauguration pulled in more than 7 million peak viewers yesterday, making it one of the highest rating programmes of the day.

More than 5.1 million average viewers tuned in to see Barack Obama enter the White House yesterday afternoon, securing BBC One with a significant 33.2% audience share between 4pm and 6pm.

Meanwhile, Heston Blumenthal’s second attempt to reinvent the Little Chef’s best-selling breakfast went down well with 3.8 million peak viewers.

Channel 4 banked the all-important peak audience between 9pm and 10pm with the second episode of Big Chef Takes on Little Chef, with 3.7 million average viewers and a 16% audience share.

At the same time, BBC One’s new shocking documentary, Stabbed: The Truth About Knife Crime, attracted 2.6 million average viewers and a 11.4% audience share, while BBC Two’s last in the Nicholas Crane’s Britannia series picked up 1.7 million average viewers.

ITV1’s new crimewave show Too Posh to Pay, which investigates middle-class fraud and theft, banked 2.4 million average viewers and a 10.4% audience share between 9pm and 10pm.

However, ITV1’s popular soap managed to pull in the highest ratings of the day, just beating BBC One’s Obama coverage to the top spot – Emmerdale‘s one hour special attracted 7.3 million peak viewers and an average 29.1% audience share between 7pm and 8pm.

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 and key multi-channel stations.

BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk Channel Four: 020 7396 4444 www.channel4.com ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.com