BSkyB pushes Channel 4 aside in Christmas ratings

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BSkyB is celebrating its best ever Christmas after grabbing a higher audience share than Channel 4 across the festive week.

The aggregate viewing figures for all the BSkyB channels accounted for 9.6% of the audience share from Christmas Day until 2 January. Channel 4 recorded 8.3% of viewers across the same period.

Average audiences for Sky News were up around 50% year on year – a reaction to the Asian Tsunami disaster.

The audience for Sky News’ coverage of the unfolding catastrophe peaked at 290,000 on 31 December.

BSkyB’s previous highest audience share of 8.3% in the week ending 30 March 2003 occurred during the Iraq war.

The satellite broadcaster live sports coverage also boosted its performance.

Sky Sports 2’s Liverpool versus Chelsea game, on New Year’s Day, scored an audience of 1.7 million.

Meanwhile, the second cricket test between England and South Africa reached 686,000 viewers on 30 December.

Channel 4’s alternative festive offerings failed to whet viewers’ appetites as documentary Naked Britain and an analysis of creative double act Peter Cook and Dudley Moore both performed badly in the ratings.

Additionally, the station’s New Year’s Eve repeats of Friends, Frazier and Sex & the City finales failed to stoke viewer nostalgia.

The two hours of How Friends Changed the World struggled, with only 992,000 viewers tuning in.

Total multi channel audience share trumped all the terrestrial channels over the same seven-day period.

Multi-channel recorded a 30.6% share compared to the highest performing terrestrial station, BBC One’s 24.6%.

Source: Media Week

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