Election debate TV ratings: 4m watch leaders’ tussle
Sky debate draws high audience to digital television, also boosting BBC News Channel and Sky3
The second leaders’ debate had a live audience of 4 million viewers across Sky News, BBC News Channel and Sky3 last night, Thursday 22 April – a large audience for digital television.
Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg’s second televised encounter attracted 2.125 million viewers, an 8.7% audience share, between 8pm and 9.30pm on Sky News, which hosted the debate in Bristol with Adam Boulton.
Simulcasts on BBC News Channel (1.362 million/5.6%) and Sky3 (586,000/2.4%) took the total live audience to 4.073 million (16.7%).
A further 310,000 (6.6%) watched BBC2′s repeat of the debate between 11.30pm and 1am.
Last Thursday’s first leaders’ debate attracted a live audience of 9.4 million viewers (37%) on ITV1 between 8.30pm and 10pm.
Viewing of the debate across all three channels peaked in the first five minutes from 8pm, with a combined total of 4.884 million, a 21.% share.
Sky News, BBC News Channel and Sky3 all enjoyed a large upsurge in their ratings during the debate compared with normal viewing levels.
For Sky News, the average audience between 8.pm and 9.30pm over the past three months was 42,000 viewers, while the equivalent figure for the BBC News Channel is 88,000.
The fact that the debate was only available on digital TV and was not simulcast on any of the five main terrestrial networks – particularly one of the BBC channels – attracted criticism. However, about 95% of UK TV homes now have access to digital TV.
BBC Radio 4 also simulcast the debate, but radio audience research body Rajar only publishes figures every three months – and then ratings for individual shows are not broken out.
Last night’s debate was also simulcast across a number of other digital TV channels, including Sky News HD – which launched yesterday – Virgin Media channel 602, Freeview channel 82, BBC Parliament and al-Jazeera English. However, the combined audience across these channels is unlikely to add more than a few hundred thousand to the total figure.
The debate was also simulcast on various on-line outlets, including news.sky.com, guardian.co.uk and other newspaper websites.
More details soon…
All ratings are unofficial live overnight figures, excluding other viewing – including timeshifted (recorded), on demand, HD, +1 or other – unless otherwise stated
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TV ratingsTelevision industryTelevisionGeneral election 2010Jason Deansguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Submited at Friday, April 23rd, 2010 at 10:00 am on Entertainment by jessica
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