TV Viewing Summary W/E 21/09/97

Football seems to be the flavour of the week, with plenty of round ball fun to be seen across the spectrum of channels. At the top of the list stands the Newcastle v Barcelona game, shown by ITV Sport on Wednesday night, and watched by an audience of 8.91 million. The UEFA Cup game between Celtic and Liverpool, shown on BBC1 the previous night was watched by an audience of 7.62 million. Channel 5 even managed to jump on the bandwagon, its screening of the Chelsea v Slovan Bratislava game attacted 2.76 million viewers, the channel’s second highest rating of the week. So, rather a full-on football week. Great for fans, and great too for those who dislike the game – at least they get a sizeable proportion of televised matches over in one week so everyone’s a winner.

Channel 5 has actually had its best ever week, with its five most watched programmes all attracting audiences over the million mark. The film Speed came in a the top of the channel’s chart, watched by 3.66 million. By the looks of the programming over the last few weeks it would seem like the promised improvement in quality of films is beginnning to take effect. Channel 4 continues to stand firmly rooted in Brookside and Countdown territory, though Friends this week pushed up its increasing audience by just under half a million to 6 million viewers.

The story stays the same for the soaps, Coronation Street attracting an average audience of 14.43 million, with Eastenders chasing at 13.36 million. Emmerdale was watched by an average of 10.28 million

Not much change for the rest of BBC1 and ITV either. The usual suspects complete the line up – Heartbeat continues to reign as the top drama of the week (15.20 million). A fair amount of light entertainment, but no comedy in the top thirty this week. Unfortunately ITV have slipped again and allowed another Alright On The Night to appear on our screens though it still somehow manages to come 11th in the top 30 programmes for the week…

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