Ratings Review: BARB Week Ending 21st October 2007

It's difficult to keep finding stories in the publically released ratings from BARB every week, but some of the numbers prove interesting, not just the ones I call the weekly Hall Of Shame either.

Last week, I said that we would see the first ratings for Dave. And we do. But unfortunately, we only have the share and reach ratings, no ratings for individual programmes. But we can see that Dave benefited from the usual pre-launch publicity, and the controversy surrounding the branding itself, to earn itself a 1.1 share / 23.7 weekly reach. Over 11 million viewers tuned into the channel sometime during its first week. Dave may have also benefited from being added to Freeview. Dave certainly did seem to take viewers from other Freeview broadcasters, but other channels may have also lost out to Dave as well. We'll know more after a few weeks worth of ratings.

Dave made it into the top 10 digital channels this week.

01. ITV2 - 1.8 / 32.2
02. Sky Sports 1 - 1.3 / 12.5
03. ITV3 - 1.2 / 14.7
04. CBeebies - 1.2 / 10.9
05. Dave - 1.1 / 23.7
06. BBC3 - 1.0 / 26.3
07. E4 - 1.0 / 20.0
08. Sky One 1.0 / 16.2
09. Film 4 - 0.9 / 14.8
10. ITV4 - 0.8 / 19.9

On though to the weekly Hall Of Shame, which welcomes some new entrants and a returning entrant this week. Once again, these results are listed in no particular order...

Sky Travel Shop - 35,000
Sky Arts - 111,000
Anime Central - 74,000
Business Channel - 69,000
Community Channel - 149,000
Discovery +1.5 - 133,000
Diva TV - 124,000
Fashion TV - 197,000
Film 24 - 133,000
Fox News - 183,000
Golf Channel UK - 166,000
Legal TV - 140,000
Life One - 86,000
MusFlash - 73,000
MUTV - 66,000
Overseas Propety - 104,000
Prime TV - 135,000
Real Estate TV - 138,000
Rockworld TV - 72,000
Setanta Golf - 113,000
Simply TV - 60,000
The Baby Channel - 5,000
The Travel Channel - 179,000
TWC Fight - 188,000
Wedding TV - 95,000
Wedding TV +1 - 110,000
Xleague.TV - 101,000

You gotta feel sorry for The Baby Channel. First week as the lowest rated channel, and you seriously couldn't get a lower rated week. Just 5,000 viewers across the entire 7 day period. That means almost all of the schedule, was zero rated.

And we welcome Fox News Channel to the Hall Of Shame with their lowest ratings ever in the UK. We also welcome Discovery Channel +1.5 to the Hall Of Shame too. It seems that as far as timeshift channels go, +1.5 hours doesn't seem to work too well.