TV Viewing Summary W/E 28/06/98

With the World Cup moving into its second week, much of the top part of the chart is dominated by football. Rather surprisingly the England v Romania game (19.48 million) achieved a higher audience than England v Columbia (19.13 million). Mind you, as we all know well enough by now, BARB doesn’t have any means of registering ‘out of home’ viewing. I tried to be of help and did a head count at the pub I was in, but when I ‘phoned they didn’t seem to be very interested in how many people there were in the Gordon Bennett, Tooting.

The fact that England needed a draw at the very least against Colombia probably gave most of us the inspiration (and foresight) to be as close to a fountain of alcohol as possible; you learn these things when you get used to losing. Even the pre- and post-match analyses are attracting huge audiences. The after-game dissection of England v Romania was watched by 19.07 million. A huge audience really, just to watch a group of men in ill-fitting suits stumbling through irritatingly obvious statements.

All other TV shows seem to pale into insignificance, unless of course you detest football, in which case trying to keep up with the soaps can seem like negotiating penalties with Ince and Batty (hit and miss, ahem). If you have been lucky enough to work out which days and what time the soaps have been on, you’ll notice that they seem to have put themselves on a backburner for the duration of the World Cup. The worst sufferer of ‘World Cup lethargy’ seems to be Eastenders, which only managed to stretch itself to two episodes this week. The dramatic substance of Albert Square is becoming more comparable to the void in between David Beckham’s ears as the weeks go by; this week’s efforts only achieved an average audience of 10.61 million.

Coronation Street at least managed to put out all four episodes and achieved an average audience of 13.17 million. At least the script writers braved to mention that knowledge of the World Cup had indeed reached Weatherfield. It certainly seems to have passed over Albert Square without a trace…

Channel 4 continues to innovate with new ideas for the documentary format. Designs On Your… this week took us into the complex world of the bra, possibly one of the more underrated achievements of (wo)man, and 2.97 million people tuned in to find that out.

Channel 5 reminds me more and more of a kid in sweetshop. The ‘We’ve got a broadcasting licence, and we’re gonna use it (to put out lots of programmes about sex, he, he, he!)’ approach certainly seems to be winning them viewers, but of course forsakes quality programming. The pinnacle of the week was the fly on the wall show Sex Life (2.16 million), in which a couple revealed they used up to forty marital aids to improve the quality of their private lives. Presumably not all at once. I hope they’re not Jewish, because then it becomes adultery, I think…

Reviewer: Jim Sparkes

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