This week saw the second leg of both Champions League matches recently featured in Newsline‘s Programme Analysis of Live Football matches Programme Analysis: Live Football Matches W/E 09/03/97. This time both Newcastle and Manchester United played away, but still managed to achieve respectable audience figures. Manchester United verses Portuguese team FC Porto was watched by 10.32 million viewers, with Newcastle attracting 9.08 million in Monaco. Tuesday night’s game caused the BBC some rescheduling problems with Eastenders being moved to the slightly earlier ‘ghost town’ slot of 7.00pm. As a result the programme was seen by an audience of 10.99 million, around 4.5 million less than its usual average audience per episode. This of course placed Eastenders in a head to head with the ‘new kid on the block’ Emmerdale. The country soap was watched by 10.33 million, a slight fall for them but nevertheless a good result considering the circumstances, and a clear indication that the show can hold its own against the established soaps.
Bergerac star John Nettles made a brief but successful return to the screen on Sunday night, in the one off drama Midsomer Murders: The Killings at Badger’s Drift which attracted 13.53 million. Over on BBC1 Hamish Macbeth paid the price with its usual audience figure of around 10.5 million falling to 8.08 million. The second part of the Anglia drama Original Sin attracted 10.67 million on Thursday night. ITV benefit from a smooth change over of mid-week drama, with Original Sin replacing Reckless and confirming the overall popularity of ‘tragic’ drama.
One interesting change this week is the rather meteoric rise of Fridays episode of The Bill from its usual place in the lower half of the chart, to 8th position. The Bill tends to attract an audience around the 10 million mark on each of its episodes, this Friday though it shot up to 12.20 million viewers. Rather disappointingly for the BBC the audience gained by The Bill seems to be those who turned over from the Tomorrow’s World Megalab Special. Still, it makes us all realise just how much of a true following the Bill‘s usual competitor Porridge does actually have!
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