Saturday Night Viewing: BBC One Vs ITV1
It’s a widely accepted view that ITV has had a tough summer in 2006, but with the nights getting shorter comes the channel’s fight back.
With Channel 4’s ratings juggernaut Big Brother firmly out of the way, ITV has started to wheel out its audience bankers. Old favourites such as X-Factor and Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway have been steadily bolstering ITV1’s Saturday night schedule over recent weeks.
Saturday 23 September saw the return of Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway which comfortably won its slot against BBC One’s repeat showing of Men In Black, with 4.4 million adult viewers. Having begun the evening with a strong start, the baton was passed to X-Factor, which outperformed the National Lottery Draw by an average of 3.5 million adults
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The following Saturday was more of the same, with ITV1 consistently posting an adult audience total of at least 6.7 million for the quarter hour periods between 6.45pm and 9.15pm. The double helpings of X-Factor and Saturday Takeaway comfortably saw off BBC One’s offerings of the film Haunted Mansion, National Lottery and Casualty.
The first Saturday of October saw BBC One put an end to ITV1’s previous two-week ratings win. Kicking off with England’s dismal draw with Macedonia, Match Of The Day Live attracted an average adult rating of 6.4 million, rising to an average of 6.8 million for the match’s duration, comfortably beating the first edition of X-Factor.
Next up was the hotly anticipated “modern” updating of Robin Hood, featuring relative newcomer Jonas Armstrong. Despite an initial quarter-hour dip from MOTD Live, the swashbuckling epic increased BBC One’s average adult audience for the duration of the hour-long show, with 7.5 million tuning in to the debut episode.
Completing a strong night for BBC One was the return of dance competition Strictly Come Dancing, with 8.3 and 7.1 million adults watching the first and second shows. The only periods an ITV1 programme managed to outperform its BBC One rival was during the first 15 minutes of Robin Hood and the last 30 minutes of the X-Factor results show.
Moving onto Saturday 14 October, both Robin Hood and Strictly Come Dancing experienced dips in audience totals. Moved to the earlier time of 6pm, the celebrity dance show lost two million adult viewers, whilst Robin Hood dipped by 1.3 million, being outperformed by the first live X-Factor by around 1.7 million. The closest fought ratings battle was between Casualty and Saturday Takeaway, with both programmes attracting around 6.5 million for the duration of the BBC One show.
As the Saturday night reality shows X-Factor and Strictly Come Dancing progress and reach their conclusions in the run up to Christmas, it will be interesting to see who will win the ratings battle.
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