TV Viewing Summary W/E 17/05/98

7.81 million tuned in to watch the F.A. Cup Final on ITV, with 590,000 watching Sky’s coverage. One of the many big ‘TV sporting occasions’ where the need to refine the BARB method of registering ‘outside the home’ viewing is drawn to our attention once more. Most of the pubs (and indeed viewers in them) seemed to favour Sky’s almost all day coverage – and there were no doubt more than half a million people in the pubs that afternoon. The terrestrial coverage of the European Cup Winners Cup Final almost rivalled the FA Cup Final in terms of viewers, attracting 7.57 million.

Coronation Street pulls in an average audience of 13.39 million this week, with Eastenders rallying slightly on previous weeks’ results. Thanks to farcical events surrounding the ‘wedding’ of Terry and Irene the average audience this week was 12.39 million. Emmerdale not doing quite as well as recent weeks, but still achieving an average figure of 9.75 million over its four episodes.

The usual dramas fall into the usual order; Where The Heart Is attracted 9.67 million, followed by The Unknown Soldier (8.26 million) and Touching Evil (8.10 million). Notably, all these are ITV dramas, the BBC are really not having a very good time in that department at the moment. Their latest effort, Invasion Earth (billed as an English answer to the X Files) has completely bombed, still only attracting 5.32 million viewers in its second episode. Channel 4’s Killer Net slips to 2.84 million viewers this week.

Overall ITV took 34.3% Viewing Share this week, against BBC1’s 28.3%. Channels 4 and 5 remain much the same with 9.8% and 4.3% share respectively.

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Reviewer: Jim Sparkes