Ratings Review: BARB Week Ending 30th September 2007

Well, we have some very interesting and unusual news from the latest publically released ratings figures from BARB.

It was during this week that ITV2 premiered The Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, a series that seemingly is not going to air on ITV1 for a while yet. At the moment, this commission seems to be exclusive to ITV2. Everybody wondered how high or low the ratings would be. Now, we can reveal all...

1,997,000 viewers.

Just 3,000 shy of the 2 million mark.

Not surprisingly, this, along with another million plus rating for an X-Factor episode, saw ITV2 gain a 2.2 share / 33.1 reach for the week. Huge numbers.

In other ratings news, Sky One is back above the 1% share mark with a 1.1 / 16.3. Decent numbers for the channel, and a marked improvement on the recent downward trend. IT was helped by the fact that the top 3 shows on the channel all scored over half a million, with a new episode of The Simpsons scoring 750,000. And for a change, the new Prison Break season scored in the top 10 finally, coming in at Number 2. Other than that and Premier League All Stars at Number 9, every other spot is taken by The Simpsons. Improvement, yes, but still, a long way to go, in order for Sky One to reclaim the top spot in digital TV.

Time for the regular "Hall Of Shame". This week, the channels that have performed the worst, are, in no particular order...

Sky Travel Shop - 93,000
Sky Arts - 135,000
Anime Central - 123,000
Baby TV - 157,000
Business Channel - 65,000
Community Channel - 146,000
Film 24 - 76,000
Golf Channel - 167,000
Legal TV - 162,000
Life One - 114,000
MusFlash - 29,000
MUTV - 93,000
Overseas Property TV - 81,000
Rockworld TV - 85,000
Setanta Golf - 166,000
Simply TV - 28,000
The Baby Channel - 52,000
The Travel Channel - 190,000
The Travel Channel +1 - 142,000
Wedding TV - 154,000
Wedding TV +1 - 156,000
XLeague.TV - 106,000

No surprise, yet again, Simply TV, simply is the bottom rung of the televisual ladder.

Not that the likes of Wedding TV have any real cause for celebration. It says a lot when your timeshift channel does better than the main channel.

And finally, it has to be said that the first two weeks of Nuts TV have been spectacularly low, even though they have managed to avoid entry into the Hall Of Shame, so far. 298,000 and 377,000 viewers respectively, are not great numbers for a channel that broadcasts on Freeview. Perhaps Turner Broadcasting, who surprise suprise, are the registered owners of Nuts TV, should be looking for other options.