TV Viewing Summary W/E 26/10/97
This week the Simpsons recapture their place at the top of the Sky Chart, pushing the football down into second place, with the Sunday afternoon Premiership slot attracting 1.42 million viewers. The Simpsons reappear in third place, this of course being a repeated episode, as Sky capitalise on the programme’s popularity by showing an old and new episode of the anarchic cartoon back to back. The new episode attracts the higher rating of the two, and shows a continued interest from Sky viewers in the development of Bart et al into well balanced citizens taking America into the 21st Century. Overall Sky has had quite a good week, with the film Broken Arrow attracting an audience of 1.01 million. The ‘Other Astra Channels’ chart shows us the most popular shows from the Astra panel outside the Sky Network. Nickelodeon hold onto most of the chart, as in previous weeks, with Sister Sister and Sabrina Teenage Witch proving to be the most popular shows.
Back down to earth now, and a closer look at how the terrestrial channels have performed this week. Coronation Street leads the way with a commanding average of 16.30 million viewers over its four episodes, Eastenders follows with 14.53 million on average, and Emmerdale continues its recent run of success, holding on to an average of 12.06 million viewers this week.
The Winter dramas are now beginning to make a firm mark upon the chart, Heartbeat continues to reign at the top, this week attracting an audience of 16.53 million. Casualty and London’s Burning battle it out in places nine and ten, commanding audiences of 12.86 million and 12.63 million respectively. New drama this week comes in the form of Gold (11.25 million), Kay Mellor’s third series following the highly strung lives of a handful of Bradford (ex)hookers. As with the first two series, the pace of the plot is fast and furious, upheld by powerful dialogue and gripping performance. Perhaps a little too gritty to ever achieve the dizzy viewing heights of the ‘family friendly Heartbeat types’, but this aside, Gold must be the best drama to hit our screens since Our Friends In The North.
Saturday nights have returned to their usual Winter format, with Noel’s House Party reappearing in the chart. No change from the position it finished in at the end of the last series though, with the residents of Crinklybottom still finding themselves a little worse for wear at the hands of Blind Date. Cilla takes 8.98 million viewers this week, just beating Noels audience of 8.56 million. Still, there’s always next week………
…As I’m sure most of you have already noticed, there are several new features appearing on MediaTel, including our Astra Top Programmes charts, in the new Cable and Satellite Database. Each week in addition to the usual terrestrial top programme charts in Television, we will be producing a top ten listing of Sky’s main shows, as well as a separate list showing the overall top ten from the rest of the Astra Non-Sky Channels.
Subscribers can access the Television Database by selecting “Television” from the drop-down box at the top of this page.