Ratings Review: BARB Week Ending 14th October 2007

Well, the main story in the ratings this week, seems to be one of recovery for Sky One. For the second time in three weeks, the channel has increased its share of viewing, this time going up to 1.2 share / 16.9 weekly reach, which equates to a total of just over 8 million viewers over the course of the week. Despite that, that is still about half a million less viewers than Sky Three, despite it having a lower share (0.7 / 18.0).

However, on the positive side for Sky One is the fact that despite the fact that The Simpsons still had 6 of the Top 10 highest rated programmes, the Top 5 were not dominated by any one show. Noel Edmonds' new quiz show for Sky One, Are You Smarter Than A 10 Year Old? has for the second week in a row come in at Number 2 in the top 10, with an audience over 600,000. Add to that episodes of Ross Kemp On Gangs, Stargate Atlantis and Prison Break all scoring over the half a million mark, and you'll see that Sky One has an improving stable of programmes. There's still work to be done, but there is a good foundation forming.

It's unfortunate that a lot of the news channels ratings information is not made publically available. In terms of share of viewing and weekly reach, we have ratings for Sky News, BBC News 24 and Fox News, but for individual programmes, only data for Sky News is publically available. For Sky News, their top rated bulletin was a Sunday edition of Sky News at Seven, which just made it over the 100,000 mark! Just out of interest, I wonder just how low the ratings are for Fox News Channel over here. I know they reached only 216,000 viewers this week, but I wonder how that pans out for individual shows. It's kinda disappointing that BBC News 24 don't have their indivdual show ratings released. I'd love to do what Inside Cable News and TV Newser do for US cable news channels and release the hour by hour comparison for primetime. That would be truly interesting information. Unfortunately, I think I'd have to be a subscriber to get that info, and that means paying thousands of pounds a year to get it.

There's a whole load of news channels that do not subscribe to BARB and therefore do not have ratings information collected for them by BARB. CNNI, CNBC Europe, Bloomberg UK, EuroNews, France 24, Al Jazeera English, NDTV 24x7 and others do not appear on the list of channels in the BARB ratings list, so unfortunately, we have no idea just how many people watch those channels at all.

Onto the timeshift channels, and let's list the Top 5 again.

E4 +1 - 0.6 / 13.6
Channel 4 +1 - 0.5 / 14.5
ITV2 +1 - 0.4 / 9.5
Living TV+1 - 0.4 / 8.0
UKTV Gold +1 - 0.3 / 9.1

Next, to the weekly Hall Of Shame...

Sky Travel Shop - 73,000
Anime Central - 88,000
Business Channel - 40,000
Community Channel - 108,000
Diva TV - 156,000
Fashion TV - 169,000
Golf Channel UK - 99,000
Legal TV - 121,000
LIfe One - 121,000
MusFlash - 60,000
MUTV - 74,000
Overseas Property TV - 41,000
Performance Channel - 195,000
Real Estate TV - 128,000
Rockworld TV - 41,000
Setanta Golf - 134,000
Simply TV - 40,000
The Baby Channel - 28,000
The Travel Channel - 191,000
The Travel Channel +1 - 180,000
Wedding TV - 161,000
Wedding TV +1 - 128,000
Xleague.TV - 96,000

And finally for this week's ratings, a heads up for next week, when we get the first set of ratings for Dave, the rebranded UKTV G2. The final week's ratings for G2 looked like this. 0.5 share / 11.9 weekly reach, which equates to over 5.6 million viewers. The timeshift version had a 0.1 / 2.6, which equated to just over 1.25 million viewers. Their last week's top 10 programmes looked like this...

1	TOP GEAR (Thu 2001)	190
2	BILLY CONNOLLY'S WORLD TOUR OF (Sun 2220)	185
3	QI (Mon 2100)	177
4	TOP GEAR (Tue 2000)	169
5	DRAGONS' DEN (Thu 2100)	150
6	BILLY CONNOLLY'S WORLD TOUR OF (Sun 2140)	148
7	BILLY CONNOLLY'S WORLD TOUR OF (Sun 2300)	143
8	BILLY CONNOLLY'S WORLD TOUR OF (Sat 2220)	137
9	THE CATHERINE TATE SHOW (Fri 2100)	131
10	TOP GEAR (Tue 1900)	116

So, just how much better or worse will Dave do? Answers next week...

Ratings Review: BARB Week Ending 07 October 2007

A bit later than usual this week, because there are less obvious stories this week.

The main one however, is Virgin 1. In it's first week of operation, V1 manages a credible 0.5 share / 13.8 weekly reach. This equates to just over 6.5 million viewers across the week. Ther timeshift version manages a 0.1 / 4.3, which is just over 2 million viewers across the week.

Compare this to FTN's final week numbers which were 0.2 / 6.2, which is just under 3 million viewers across the week, plus a negligable share and 1.6 weekly reach, which is 759,000 viewers across the week, and you can see that initial indications for Virgin 1 look promising. More viewers in general have turned to the effectively rebranded FTN channel.

This does look like the first shots being fired in a new battle between Sky and Virgin Media, and the battleground could well be Freeview, as I mentioned previously in a post here at the MediaBlog about a month ago.

One interesting note this week on Timeshift channels. Just out of interest, here are the top 5.

E4 +1 - 0.6 / 13.3
Channel 4 +1 - 0.5 / 14.9
UKTV Gold +1 - 0.4 / 9.2
Living +1 - 0.4 / 7.9
ITV2 +1 - 0.3 / 8.8

It is very interesting to note that E4 has the most timeshift viewers, more than the most popular digital channel, ITV2.

Now, to the "Hall Of Shame", once again, in no particular order...

Sky Travel Shop - 50,000
Anime Central - 82,000
Business Channel - 79,000
Community Channel - 106,000
Diva TV - 106,000
Fashion TV - 122,000
Film 24 - 130,000
Golf Channel - 153,000
Hollywood TV - 185,000
Legal TV - 140,000
Life One - 184,000
MusFlash - 51,000
MUTV - 45,000
Overseas Property - 69,000
Performance Channel - 162,000
Real Estate TV - 175,000
Rockworld TV - 70,000
Setanta Golf - 122,000
Simply TV - 33,000
The Baby Channel - 81,000
The Travel Channel +1 - 196,000
Wedding TV - 124,000
Wedding TV +1 - 123,000
XLeague.TV - 95,000

The interesting thing to note is that Baby TV, which was on the list last week, has come off the publically released list this week. Why I don't know, but when channels choose not to release ratings info, it's a sure fire sign of trouble. Baby TV announced on 8th October 2007 that Fox International Channels has acquired a "...major stake..." in the channel.

Newly launched Diva TV, from the team behind The Hallmark Channel, is new to the list, with a paltry 106,000 viewers. Despite airing programmes like The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Late Show with David Letterman, all the channel has so far managed to succeed in doing is pull in one of the lowest rated launches ever in the history of television. They say they are "...sassy, sexy and totally seductive...", whilst in reality they are nothing of the sort.