Are they laughing at ITV?
Despite the fact that ITV secured the first interview with Prince William and Kate Middleton after they announced their intention to marry next year, the BBC beat ITV in the all important first run interview ratings on Tuesday night, using ITV’s own footage.
ITV journalist Tom Brady conducted the interview with the blushing pair for his network, but the channel had agreed to make the footage available to other networks with a 7pm embargo.
That meant that BBC One were able to run the interview in their tea-time magazine programme The One Show, directly against ITV’s royal engagement news special which also began at 7pm … it was so important in fact, that ITV even moved Emmerdale.
The result, well it wasn’t good for the commercial broadcaster.
The One Show (on BBC One and BBC One HD) attracted an average audience of 6.352 million viewers, 28.2 per cent audience share of all British television viewers at that time.
ITV’s news special – in the same timeslot – only managed 5.914 million viewers, a 26.3 per cent audience share on ITV1 and ITV1 HD.
The most annoying thing from ITV’s point of view (beyond the fact they got beaten in the ratings by their own interview) was that Emmerdale usually beats The One Show in the ratings, but because they’d moved it back half an hour to accommodate their royal extravaganza, it too got savaged in the ratings, this time by EastEnders on BBC One at 7.30pm.
All round a rather annoying end to a day for ITV that had begun so brightly.
