ITV’s high profile light entertainment series Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? has proven to be fairly successful for the network. Whilst nobody actually managed to walk away with the million pound cash prize, viewers were still willing to follow the progress of the show until its conclusion on Sunday. Viewing figures ranged from 8.97 million for Tuesday’s edition to 12.47 million for the final show on Sunday. The programme was also successful in poaching viewers from some strong BBC1 shows, including Casualty, which had an audience of 9.82 million compared to 10.55 million for the Saturday edition of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?.
The much talked about head to head between Coronation Street and Eastenders on Sunday ended up with ITV just coming out on top. The half hour episode of Corrie attracted an audience of 12.78 million in comparison to 12.61 million for the hour long edition of Eastenders.
Two traditionally big ITV dramas are struggling for form thanks to scheduling and cast changes. Heartbeat, no longing starring Nick Berry, was only watched by 11.24 million people, a fall of 3.67 million on last year’s figures. London’s Burning, which ITV has moved back to its old Saturday time-slot, pulled in 9.02 million viewers down 3.76 million on last year’s figures.
BBC1’s decision to poach yet another one of BBC2’s top-rated programmes has come up trumps again. Following Changing Rooms‘ lead, the garden makeover programme, Ground Force, pulled a healthy 9.21 million viewers.
Having seemingly run out of new light entertainment programmes to interest viewers, ITV has decided to try and tear families apart. Cilla Black’s Moment of Truth features various different families having to perform certain tricks or tasks to win prizes for the whole family. As if to pile more pressure on the person performing said task, the family gets to see and touch the prizes beforehand. Saturday’s show pulled in an okay 7.65 million viewers, which is about a million down on the viewing Cilla’s other Saturday show, Blind Date, achieved last year.
Reviewer: Simon Wright
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