W7: Official Weekly Ratings Roundup (13 Feb 2023 - 19 Feb 2023)
Official Ratings: 13 Feb 2023 - 19 Feb 2023
We see some great progress for Channel 4 shows, with a couple making it into the top 50. BBC drama, Better, makes its debut below figures achieved by The Gold's opener.
DISCLAIMER: All sources used in this post are linked at the bottom. For any further information, most data will be found amidst these sources. Some topical jargon will also be found alongside these sources. The figures mentioned in this article include the usual platform data (those watching on tablets, phones & PC's) and pre-transmission data (those who watched the series or show before its first airing as part of the likes of a boxset) if it is applicable. Any data labelled with a * symbol means that this data is not included, and is just regular TV live viewing & catch-up alone.
This time around, Death in Paradise strengthens its lead, pulling in 7.10m viewers this week, seeing a nice rise on last week's low of just under 6.9m. The remainder of the top five switched it up a little, however. ITV1's Vera pulled ahead of the competition, and saw its highest figure of the series, likely due to having no direct competition from 'Call the Midwife' this week. The drama pulled in 6.46m viewers, up almost 600k on its usual range at the 5.9m mark.
With the final of The Masked Singer being this week, in which we saw the Rhino crowned the champion, the show sat nicely ahead of Michael McIntyre's Big Show. The ITV1 spectacle entertained 5.74m viewers, official data from BARB shows. This figure is only 230k above last week, however. Despite a reasonably small rise for ITV1, McIntyre took a larger stumble, slipping almost 800k from last week's audience.
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| Promotional Photo for BBC's 'Better'. SOURCE: BBC |
When it comes to the drama battles, the newest series doesn't quite take the top spot and is below the opening audience of continuing drama, The Gold. Starring Leila Farzad & Andrew Buchan (pictured), Better made its debut with a respectable audience of 4.69m, putting it below The Gold's opening of 6.23m by a rather large 1.54m. Speaking of 'The Gold', the intense drama continued with 4.97m viewers, showing a rather sharp drop in viewership by 20% (1.26m). Even with this drop, it is still holding on to a top five position in the charts across all channels, whereas 'Better' has debuted in 10th. Both shows are still doing quite well, but will you be/are watching?
Elsewhere this week, Dancing On Ice managed to pick itself back up, rising to 3.91m viewers, back where it's averaging now the series is well on its way. It is also ahead of the new series of Starstruck which made a steady return. Even with the surprise of Shania Twain's addition to the panel, the show could only grab 3.29m, despite a strong lead-in from 'The Masked Singer'. This figure is also considerably lower than those achieved by the first series which opened in early 2022 with 4.36m viewers. However, when it comes to channel placement, Series 2 began in 32nd place across all channels, not too far out from the 30th place the first series slotted in to. With times constantly changing, maybe the reduced audience isn't too bad at all?
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| The judging panel on ITV1's second series of Starstruck. SOURCE: ITV Press |
Another yearly spectacle aired this week, the BAFTA Film Awards took to BBC One, and reached a rather low 2.73m people on Sunday evening, providing little competition against the likes of 'Vera'. Antiques Roadshow aired on BBC2 at the same time, and sat ever so slightly ahead with 2.78m. Channel 4's best performing show The Great Pottery Throwdown also performed better. The pottery show aired 45 minutes in to the event, and pulled in 2.85m viewers.
ITV1's Maternal & Next Level Chef remain quite solid, but still below the 2m mark. The medical drama sticks with the same audience as last week, however, showing nice stability at 1.95m*. The latter rose slightly to 1.53m*.
Moving away from the top charts brings us to Channel 5's top performers. This week, no show managed to surpass the 2m mark, as The Catch slips to a series low of 1.89m* viewers, which is still the top performer for the channel, but well below last week's 2.3m audience. Another notable drop comes from Dinosaur With Stephen Fry which slipped to 0.89m* viewers according to data from Thinkbox. This puts it 28% down on the series opener. A pretty good performance came from documentary series Carry On: Secrets & Scandals which was the channel's 5th most-watched show, entertaining 1.34m* viewers, pushing ahead of 22 Kids & Counting which remained steady at 1.31m* this week.
Back to Channel 4, another show stepped into the top fifty this week, and its Claudia Winkleman's latest adventure with The Piano, sitting very nicely at 2.75m viewers. It was the channel's 2nd most-watched show of the week, and shows a pretty healthy catch-up audience of around 1.1m. Can it maintain these strong figures? Evidence would suggest so after the second audience climbed in viewership to 1.9m according to Broadcast. This year's National Comedy Awards entertained 1.09m* viewers, data shows making the event the channel's 9th most-watched show. For a two hour show, perhaps more was expected?
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| Tom Allen pictured for 'The National Comedy Awards'. SOURCE: British Comedy Guide |
Love Island managed to take a couple episodes into the charts, with Friday & Sunday's editions reaching 2.89m & 2.87m viewers, respectively. It is slightly below the high of 3.01m achieved last week, but showing some sturdiness since it has been running for some time now. I'm sure ITV2 would hope 'Big Brother' can do the same later in the year, if not better.
With another week of 2023 complete, which shows are you tuned in to? Are there any surprise heavy-hitters so far, this year? Which, if any, of the BBC dramas are you enjoying right now? With some pretty decent drops this week, will any shows bounce back, or will audiences dwindle? Can ITV1 reach a top spot soon, or is its best 2023 performance going to stick at 2nd place?
As always, thanks for reading, and feel free to share your thoughts with me here or by commenting on dedicated posts. Also, if you wish, you can work with me, or send specific requests; I am available for work at: ratingsuk@outlook.com or you can message me on Twitter/Instagram.
TOPICAL JARGON:
Overnight Figure: This is those who watched live or on the same day before 2AM.
Audience Share: This is the percent of the overall audience a given show had at the time of airing. Sometimes, it may say commercial share which is the share it had across channels with advertisements only.
VOSDAL: This stands for 'Viewing On Same Day As Live' which makes up part of the overnight figure, but it is those who did not watch the programme live yet did watch within the same day or before 2AM.
Platform Data: This is those who caught up on alternative screens such as PC's, phones or tablets. This data is used for most shows in this report, unless highlighted with a * symbol.
Pre-Transmission Data: This figure is usually assigned to shows that drop a boxset before the initial airing of the episode in question, so will already have an audience before the first live airing of a given show. Few shows qualify for this data, however, but was available for figures applicable shows in this post unless labelled with a * symbol.
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