Premiership Slips Down Ratings League

ITV’s Saturday night Premier League offering, The Premiership, attracted even less viewers than at its launch last week (see ITV’s The Premiership Fails To Score) when it aired for a second time during the weekend. The 7pm show attracted an average of just 3.1m viewers or a 19.3% share during what is usually key family viewing time.

At the weekend’s Edinburgh Television Festival, and before the second outing was broadcast, ITV’s chief executive David Liddiment expressed his continuing belief in the programme, whose timing in the early evening slot has been criticised. “We put it there believing that it would attract more viewers than late on the BBC.” he said.

When pressed on just how long the channel would tolerate a non-ratings winner in the centre of Saturday night prime time Liddiment insisted he did not have a set number of Saturdays in mind before the programme was moved to a later slot. He admitted that if the programme was still only attracting its 4m launch audience by April next year he would not be happy, but if that is still the case in November this year, he said “We will not necessarily move it.”

Steve Anderson, controller of news, current affairs and religion on the ITV network, followed the party line by declaring it “Insane” to dismiss ITV’s attempt to replace Match of the Day as a failure on the basis of one set of audience figures. He pointed out that such a programme would need time to bed in, while his colleague, controller of entertainment, Claudia Rosecrantz, pointed out that the BBC will not be able to keep producing spoilers such as last week’s Weakest Link.

ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.co.uk

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