TV Viewing Round Up – April 2000
Programmes Man United’s disastrous Champions League match against Real Madrid proved, that while they may be the team that everyone loves to hate, they can still pull in big ratings for televised football. The second leg quarter-final match, which finished 3-2 to Real Madrid, attracted an audience of 9.83 million (with a consolidated viewing share of 41%). This compares to an audience of 8.75 million for Chelsea’s first leg match against Barcelona, shown a week earlier, from the same competition.
Programmes that did well during the month of April include: the first edition of Tonight at the London Palladium, which attracted an audience of 8.29 million; The Railway Children, with 9.63 million viewers; one-off detective drama Rebus, watched by 7.7 million viewers and the special Sunday edition of The Bill, which was watched by 11.49 million people.
Viewing ITV has, for the first time since January, recorded a year on year increase in its average hours and minutes total. During April ITV was watched on average for seven hours and forty-one minutes, compared to seven hours and thirty-eight minutes for April 1999 (up 0.6%).
April was also good for the other commercial stations, which all achieved year on year increases above five percent. The best performance was recorded by non-terrestrial stations (Others), which went from an average of three hours and forty-three minutes in April 1999 to four hours twenty-one minutes (up 17%).
| Month | BBC1 | BBC2 | ITV | C4/S4C | Channel 5 | Others |
| Apr-2000 | 6:58 | 3:05 | 7:41 | 2:45 | 1:29 | 4:21 |
| Apr-1999 | 7:13 | 3:09 | 7:38 | 2:35 | 1:20 | 3:43 |
| % Change | -3.5 | -2.2 | 0.6 | 6.5 | 11.2 | 17.0 |
Of the terrestrial stations, only Channel 4 and Channel 5 recorded year on year increases in viewing share. Viewing share in April stood at 10.43 and 5.64 percent for Channel 4 and Channel 5, up 0.37 and 0.38 percentage points respectively on April 1999.
As reported earlier in the month (see Feature: Terrestrial Stations Lose Out As Digital Gains Ground), the growth of digital television continues to chip away viewing share from terrestrial stations. Other channels’ viewing share for April was 16.53 percent, up 2.12 percentage points year on year.
| Month | BBC1 | BBC2 | ITV | C4/S4C | Channel 5 | Others |
| Apr-2000 | 26.48 | 11.73 | 29.19 | 10.43 | 5.64 | 16.53 |
| Apr-1999 | 28.26 | 12.23 | 29.77 | 10.06 | 5.26 | 14.41 |
| % Point Change | -1.78 | -0.50 | -0.58 | 0.37 | 0.38 | 2.12 |
Others franchise viewing share continues its steady growth, with all but the South West ITV region recording year on year increases. Others biggest yearly increase was in the Wales & West region, up 3.8 percentage points on April 1999. Others viewing share within the Ulster region has now risen to the point where is only 0.3 percentage points behind BBC1’s share.
| Franchise Area | BBC1 | YoY Point Ch | BBC2 | YoY Point Ch | ITV | YoY Point Ch | C4/S4C | YoY Point Ch | Channel 5 | YoY Point Ch | Others | YoY Point Ch |
| London (Wkdy & Wknd) | 26.8 | -1.7 | 11.9 | -0.5 | 25.9 | -0.8 | 10.4 | 0.3 | 6.5 | 0.7 | 18.4 | 1.8 |
| Midlands (Central) | 25.0 | -1.7 | 12.2 | 0.4 | 28.8 | 0.3 | 9.2 | 0.3 | 7.6 | 0.3 | 17.3 | 0.7 |
| North West (Granada) | 25.0 | -2.0 | 11.3 | 0.6 | 29.2 | -3.2 | 9.9 | 0.4 | 5.8 | 1.2 | 18.6 | 2.7 |
| Yorkshire | 26.1 | -1.8 | 11.9 | -0.5 | 31.1 | -0.9 | 11.0 | 1.0 | 6.4 | 0.3 | 13.4 | 1.8 |
| Central/North Scotland | 23.2 | -2.0 | 10.6 | -1.4 | 28.0 | 0.7 | 11.5 | 0.2 | 6.9 | 0.6 | 19.9 | 2.0 |
| Wales & West (HTV) | 29.3 | -1.8 | 12.2 | -0.6 | 27.6 | -1.0 | 9.4 | 0.3 | 3.7 | -0.6 | 17.9 | 3.8 |
| South & South East & Channel Islands | 28.0 | -1.4 | 13.3 | -0.5 | 31.1 | -1.1 | 11.4 | 0.7 | 1.5 | 0.5 | 14.7 | 1.9 |
| North East (Tyne Tees) | 25.2 | -1.5 | 11.2 | 0.2 | 29.4 | -1.4 | 9.6 | -0.2 | 5.8 | -0.4 | 18.8 | 3.3 |
| East (Anglia TV) | 26.6 | -3.0 | 11.7 | -0.6 | 29.6 | -0.7 | 10.0 | 0.4 | 3.6 | 0.7 | 18.5 | 3.2 |
| South West (West Country) | 31.8 | -1.0 | 16.6 | 1.5 | 29.8 | -0.2 | 12.1 | 1.1 | 3.1 | 0.7 | 6.7 | -2.0 |
| Ulster (UTV) | 21.3 | -3.3 | 10.4 | -0.5 | 32.8 | -0.9 | 10.8 | 0.9 | 3.9 | 0.2 | 20.9 | 3.6 |
| Border | 26.0 | -2.3 | 12.6 | 1.4 | 33.7 | -1.9 | 11.0 | 0.2 | 3.0 | -0.5 | 13.7 | 3.2 |
Ratings April saw all but one of the peaktime audience ratings for the commercial terrestrial stations rise year on year. ITV’s housewives with children fell by 0.8 percentage points on April 1999, to now stand at 15.7%.
| Station | Day | Adults | YoY Ch | Men | YoY Ch | Women | YoY Ch | Hwives | YoY Ch | Hswvs/Ch | YoY Ch | ABC1 Adults | YoY Ch |
| BBC1 | Mon-Sun | 11.6 | -1.1 | 10.3 | -1.1 | 12.8 | -1.0 | 13.3 | -1.1 | 11.7 | -2.2 | 12.0 | -0.5 |
| BBC2 | Mon-Sun | 5.1 | -0.4 | 5.6 | -0.2 | 5.5 | 0.2 | 4.7 | -1.2 | 3.0 | -0.8 | 5.6 | -0.6 |
| ITV | Mon-Sun | 15.5 | 0.6 | 13.7 | 0.7 | 17.1 | 0.3 | 17.8 | 0.5 | 15.7 | -0.8 | 13.2 | 0.4 |
| Channel 4 | Mon-Sun | 4.1 | 0.1 | 3.8 | 0.1 | 4.3 | 0.0 | 4.6 | 0.1 | 4.4 | 0.0 | 4.3 | 0.2 |
| Channel 5 | Mon-Sun | 3.2 | 0.4 | 3.2 | 0.4 | 3.1 | 0.3 | 3.6 | 0.4 | 2.8 | 0.6 | 2.2 | 0.1 |
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