Ratings Review: BARB Week Ending 15th October 2006

It has taken a day or so of analysis of the publicly available BARB data, but there are one or two interesting conclusions out of this week's data.

It doesn't happen very often with multi-channel programmes, and it is more memorable because of it, but one programme on one of the multi channels did reach the 2 million mark. It was Sky Sports 1's coverage of England's international football game, which scored a massive 2.03 million viewers. This helped the channel to gain a 2.0% share / 15.3% weekly reach.

In the wake of the recent Sunday Times story about NASN possibly being sold to ESPN, I thought it might be a good idea to check out the ratings data. Unfortunately, there is no publicly available ratings data for NASN, or indeed any of the Setanta channels. However, I am able to look at ratings for the channels owned by Disney, ESPN's parent company.

ABC1 dropped to 0.3% share / 5.6% weekly reach.

Disney Channel achieved 0.4% share / 5.5% weekly reach, whilst its +1 got 0.2% share / 4.5% weekly reach.

Disney Cinemagic got only 0.1% share / 2.2% weekly reach, whilst the +1 got 0.1% share / 2.1% weekly reach.

And finally, ESPN Classic, barely registers in terms of share and only 0.9% in terms of weekly reach.

ESPN have beenn trying to get into the European market for years, part owning EuroSport for a time, but have never truly broken through. A deal for ESPN to buy NASN may well be on the cards. We'll wait and see.

ITV2 once again wins the ratings battle this week with 2.1% share, and ITV4 is improving ratings wise, now up to 0.6% share with a 13.3% weekly reach.

Sky One's recent steal of Lost from Channel 4 may well be the boost it needs ratings wise, as they still languish at 1.6% share / 22.3% weekly reach. This is despite a good 1.189 million viewers tuning in for the Sunday premiere of an episode of The Simpsons. In fact, there are no top 10 entries in the Sky One chart for any other programme, which kinda highlights how poor their shcedule really is. Unsurprisingly, Sky Three gets more viewers than Sky Two, but there is little really between them. Sky Two is 0.5% share / 12.6% weekly reach, whilst Sky Three is 0.6% share / 16.4% weekly reach.

Other programmes of note scoring well, include the More 4 premiere of the controversial documentary-style drama, Death Of A President, which gained 293,000 viewers on Monday 9th October. Two repeat showings on Friday and Saturday BOTH scored over 130,000 viewers, putting the three showings at numbers 1, 6 and 7 in the More 4 Top 10. Indeed, the Channel 4 multi-channels did well this week, with all of E4's top 10 shows gaining over 300,000 viewers, which demonstrates an incredible degree of consitency, and Film 4's showing of Forrest Gump got 638,000 viewers, which boosted the channel's ratings this week to 0/8% share / 14.4% weekly reach. Film 4 has definitely benefited tremendously ratings wise from moving away from a subscription model.

With most +1 channels, they significantly less viewers than the original. However, this does not apply to the Travel Channel. In terms of Weekly reach, the original gets 126,000 viewers whilst the +1 manages 207,000. Not exactly something to celebrate though!

That performance though does keep them out of this week's bottom 5, by about 3000 viewers. Not exactly a lot, but worth a glass of something strong, none the less.

In reverse order, then, at number 5 is All In Sport, the repackaged Poker Channel, with a paltry 123,000 viewers. Number 4 is Eat Cinema, with 107,000. That's more than double any of the bottom 3 channels. At number 3 is Sky Travel Shop with just 49,000 viewers,only marginally better than Number 2's Redemption TV with just 45,000. But the worst performing channel this week, is MUTV with just 42,000 viewers weekly reach.