TV Round-Up – March 1999

A strong month for ITV and a poor one for Channel 4 in terms of impacts. All audience categories are up for ITV, particularly Housewives/Children, rising by 17.9%. The strong performance of the Network is the result of the new ITV evening schedule, minus News At Ten, which was unveiled on 8 March (see First ITV Evening News Gains 7.2m Viewers). As a result of this, Channel 4 lost impacts in every category last month; ABC1 Adults dropped by 0.9% year on year

ABC1 Adults costs on ITV rose year on year by 4.2%; the only category to fall was Housewives/Children, down by 2.6%. All C4 audience categories became more expensive due to the drop in impacts; ABC1 Adults were up by 12.5%. Channel 5 CPTs dropped in all categories bar Adults and Men which were up by 2.1% and 4.9% respectively.

Again due to the new evening schedule, ITV unsurprisingly wins the viewing share battle for March – up 1.5% points on the previous year. BBC1 was down 1.9% points year on year and BBC2’s share of viewing remained unchanged. Channel 4’s share fell by 0.6% and Channel 5 broke the 5% barrier. Cable and satellite viewing share in BARB homes dropped slightly, by 0.1% points.

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