Digital-i TV Review

the launch of a new series of Harry Hills’s TV Burp did well for ITV1 on Saturday with 6.6m, 29%. Along with veteran clip show You’ve Been Framed’s 5.6m, also hosted by our Harry these days, it contributed to a slot-winning ‘harry hill hour’ between 6;30 and 7;30pm – ITV’s two biggest audiences of the night.

But that was about it for the channel as overall ITV1 had a pretty dismal Saturday with only a 12% all-time share.

Mind you, with So You Think You Can Dance falling week on week – 4.6m, 21% for the early evening show (up against ‘HHH’) and slightly more, 4.8m, for the later elimination show (5.8m and 5.3m last week), BBC1 didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory either. But they have what ITV desperately lack on Saturday, strength in depth. Apart from against Harry Hill every show on BBC1 won its slot from breakfast to after midnight. .

ITV’s relative weakness on Saturday is not exactly a new phenomenon, but when they have a big beast like X-Factor in the schedule – i.e. most of the year! – it is far less evident.

There was some consolation for the commercial network in multi-channel land however as three of the top 4 channels were from the ITV stable.

The ITV2 schedule was robust, as usual, but it was pipped as ‘best of the rest’ overall by ITV3 whose strong archive dramas pushed them to a 3% all-time share. 4 of the 6 most watched 6 digital programmes of the day were on ITV3 with an episode of Morse attracting the biggest individual audience, over 800k.

Sky Sports 1 were in third place but were closed followed by ITV4 who also used sport – a darts tournament in their case – to boost their share to almost double what they normally achieve on Saturday. A very strong performance by ITVs digital family, and sorely needed too.

Liam.