X Factor Back With A Bang

It’s back and apparently bigger and better than ever; ITV1’s X Factor certainly drew in the punters, with Saturday night’s opening episode drawing in an impressive 7.9 million adults, up from six million for the start of last year’s competition.

The programme, which featured the usual mix of hopefuls and hopeless wannabes striving to become the next Leona Lewis or Shayne Ward helped ITV1 dominate the Saturday night viewing.

Featuring Dermot O’Leary as Kate Thornton’s replacement, a new judge in Danni Minogue and the much-publicised return of Louis Walsh, the programme’s audience peaked at 8.2 million during the 15-minute period between 7.45pm and 8pm (with an average audience share of 41.2%).

With the benefit of a ratings leg-up by X Factor and its own slight revamp, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire achieved its highest audience for several months. The new-look show, featuring a reduced number of questions and a different contestant selection process, was watched by an average of 5.4 million adults, up from 3.8 million the previous weekend.

As Big Brother slowly reaches its conclusion, it would appear that viewing has stabilised at below the four million mark. Friday night’s eviction, which saw ‘the most famous Greek person in the UK’ Gerry Stergiopoulos fall on his sword to save domineering house mother Carole Vincent, attained 3.6 and 3.5 million adult viewers for the two eviction shows. Not enough to beat a repeat showing of ITV1 drama Midsomer Murders which drew in 4.5 million viewers.

Britain’s Favourite View continues to perform well on Sunday evenings for ITV1, easily winning its slot against BBC One drama, The Chase. The celebrity-led geography show attained an adult audience of 4.8 million, compared to 3.9 million for the The Chase.

Overnight data is available each morning in mediatel.co.uk’s TV Database, with all BARB registered subscribers able to view reports for terrestrial networks, ITV2 and Sky One.

ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.com BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk Channel 4: 020 7396 4444 www.channel4.com