This week ITV decided to show another hour long edition of their second main soap Emmerdale. Usually this acts as a good ratings weapon against BBC1’s Eastenders, although this time the soap that suffered was Channel 4’s Brookside.
Tuesday’s feature length Emmerdale centred on Rachel Hughes finally twigging that her boyfriend Graham is a complete lunatic and 12.5 million viewers saw her plunge to her death. Tuesday’s edition of Brookside suffered badly attracting only 916,000 live viewers and a total consolidated viewing audience of 1.22 million (one of the programme’s lowest viewing figures since it debuted in 1982).
To coincide with the 25th Anniversary of their triumph at the Eurovision Song Contest, ITV screened The ABBA Story – The Winner Takes It All. Deciding that they did want to talk about the things they’ve been through, the documentary attracted 11.01 million viewers (making it the most watched non-soap programme of the week).
There were several new series showing this week. Of these, the pointless rehash of Candid Camera, The World of the Secret Camera, presented by Noel Edmonds attracted 7.31 million people and Ian Wright’s new show Guinness World Records attracted 7.43 million viewers. While the return of Robson Green’s Touching Evil had 9.99 million viewers tuning in.
The climax to the English Premiership meant good viewing figures for Sky Sports. The build up to the final weekend began with Chelsea’s 2-2 draw with Tottenham on Monday, which had 1.2 million viewers. This was followed the next day by Arsenal’s tragic 1-0 defeat at Leeds, which had an audience of 1.73 million. The action shifted to Blackburn on Wednesday where 1.72 million people saw Man United try to put daylight between themselves and their North London title challengers, but only manage a 0-0 draw (enough to relegate Blackburn).
The final day’s action saw most football fans preferring to watch Man United’s home match against Tottenham on Sky Sports 1 than tune into Sky Sports 3’s coverage of Arsenal against Aston Villa: 2.03 million people saw United come from behind to beat Tottenham 2-1, while only 307,000 people tuned in to see Arsenal secure a 1-0 win over Aston Villa.
Reviewer: Simon Wright
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