TV Viewing Round Up – September 2000

Programmes The return of ITV’s cash cow, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, has helped ITV find some good cheer out of a poor month. With several top programmes underperforming on previous years’ totals, the big money quiz show gave the channel a dedicated appointment-to-view audience. For this latest extended run Millionaire averaged audiences of 11.2 million, down from September 1999’s 12.1 million average.

September’s top programme unsurprisingly was Coronation Street, although its popularity has slipped possibly due to the continued fragmentation of television audiences. The nation’s favourite soap opera’s highest audience figure in September was 15.83 million viewers, compared to last September highest figure of 17.31 million viewers.

The other big soaps were effected by falling audience totals. Eastenders had an average viewing figure of 11.39 million (compared to a 12.6 million average for September 1999) and Emmerdale was watched by an average of 9.8 million people (down on last year’s 10.6 million average).

BBC1 chat show, Parkinson, got off to a good start with 8.1 million viewers tuning into the first edition of the new series. The bane of BBC2’s existence, Channel 4’s Big Brother, ended on a high this month. The last two episodes, shown on Friday 15 September, had viewing figures of 7.99 million for the 8.30pm edition and 8.45 million for the 10.30pm edition.

Blockbuster Hollywood films helped bring in big one-off audiences for ITV this month. One Fine Day was watched by 8.17 million people; Executive Decision attracted an audience of 7.37m; Licence To Kill was seen by 6.57 million; and Goldeneye attracted the highest audience with 9.09 million tuning in.

Viewing September was a good month for the BBC and Channel 4 in terms of average hours and minutes, due in part to the start of Olympics for the former and the climax of Big Brother for the latter.

People tuned into BBC1 for an average of 7 hours and 15 minutes, while BBC2 was watched on average for 2 hours and 42 minutes (increases of 10.1 and 16.5 percent respectively). This month Channel 4 had people tuning in on average for 2 hours and 43 minutes, which was a 7.9% year on year increase.

Following from August’s marginal increase, this month Channel 5 has recorded it first fall in year on year average hours and minutes total since it came on air. The station hours and minutes total fell by 9.8 percent, to stand at 1 hour and 23 minutes.

ITV’s share of viewing was greatly affected by the strong performance of the aforementioned stations. The channel’s viewing share dropped 3.84 percentage points on last year’s figures, to leave it standing at 28.1% for 2000.

Coupled with the fall of ITV’s of share and its own increase, BBC1 was the most popular channel this month (with a monthly viewing share of 28.6%).

Both ITV and Channel 5 suffered badly with viewing share by franchise area, with all regions recording year on year drops. ITV’s worst region was Wales & West, which fell by 6.8 percentage points. Channel 5’s suffered it’s biggest drop in the Midlands region, falling 1.6 percentage points on September 1999.

Ratings This month BBC2 and Channel 4 were the only terrestrial stations to increase all of their audience peaktime ratings. BBC2 performed best among Housewives with Children (up 0.3 percentage points year on year), while Channel 4’s best audience was Housewives (up 0.8 percentage points year on year).

ITV had a bad month ratings-wise with all audience categories slipping year on year. Housewives with Children fell the most, down 2.2 percentage points on September 1999.

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