TV Viewing Summary W/E 04/08/96

As the main attractions of the Olympics (the Men’s and Women’s 100 metre finals) were last week, this week sees a return to the normal pattern of soap operas dominating the top thirty programme list. Monday’s edition of Coronation Street was the top rated programme with 14.64 million viewers and a consolidated share of audience of 66%. The best placed non-soap programme is BBC1’s comedy series Men Behaving Badly at number seven on the list, which was watched by 11.86 million people. This is an increase of 2.58 million viewers from last week’s episode.

Channel 4’s top programme of the week is the US comedy series Friends, which attracted an audience of 4.09 million. This is Friends‘ second highest audience since it returned to Friday nights on Channel 4 and it has been placed no lower than fourth on Channel 4’s top ten programme list for this series.

Average television viewing for all individuals over the age of four has increased by 15.64% when compared to the same week last year. In Astra Panel home viewing of all available channels has increased by 19.5% on last year’s figure. The main reason for the big increase can be put down to the BBC’s coverage of the Olympics: BBC1 and BBC2 saw their year on year figures in terrestrial homes increase by 28.57% and 30.3% respectively. While in Astra panel homes BBC1 and BBC2 increased year on year by 50.0% and 48.6%.