TV Viewing Figures from many moons ago?
Nostalgic
Posts: 7,193 Forum Member
✭
Is there anywhere online you can access tv viewing data from before 1998? as BARB only seems to go that far back. I'm curious to know the viewing figures of alot of programmes from the 80s and 90s.
0
Comments
The Stage archive
BARB Top Tens 2/12/90
CH4 would kill for 6.63m now....heck they'd kill for 1.5m...a million....
Those viewing figures seem insane now we're in the era of multi channel TV!
Would be interesting to see how the total viewing audience compares though. I would assume that it's up on 1990 if anything given TV ownership can have only gone one way since?
Surprised Spitting Image isn't on there, that was on at the time.
I'm not surprised. It was influential and had a strong following, but it was never that popular with the mass audience.
It was on relatively late too. I was never allowed to stay up and watch it
Interesting to see the Cosby show getting good ratings. Not because it was any good, purely because it was up against the GodSlot
I'm sure I heard Fluck and Law bigging up how large the ratings were at one point in the Radio Times special in the run-up to the 2010 election?
Or were their claims just a brief spike in the ratings around 1986/87?
ITV was always strongest in the North, Northern Ireland, Central Scotland and to a lesser extent the Midlands. Even now STV and UTV outrate the BBC, though some of STV's success might have to do with being a Scottish owned station, while the BBC are seen as being an English and unionist organisation.
Actually I live in the Border region, the last part of England to get ITV, but also the most loyal to its regional bulletin, Lookaround, which even now outrates Look North. Due to west Cumbria being a mostly working class, old Labour type area shows like Coronation St and Emmerdale are far more popular here than they are in the South or the middle class Lakes part of the county.
Neighbours was broadcast twice a day and the figures were added together as an overall amount. However even taking into account the infancy of multi-channel from the late eighties the interest was astounding. Ratings were over 20 million at times(not all that many shows can say that) and to an extent were driven by the Scott and Charlene characters who became national favourites.
I can remember Brian Johnston going on about Neighbours in the Test Match Special broadcasts. That's how popular it was
If we're talking 1968 I don't think Grampian had the coverage they had in later years. They were very much North east Scotland, rather than North Scotland- so in some cases the BBC might have been unchallenged- quite simply no ITA transmitter in parts of the region to give any coverage.
Any sources for such outlandish claims?
Especially as the ratings linked to in this thread clearly show the "unionist" BBC having more programmes in the top 10 than "made in Scotland from girders" STV and Grampian.
Good point; I hadn't thought of that (though the figures do specify "North East Scotland", I think, as indeed did the ITA yearbooks of the time).
Grampian's 'Cairngorm Cabaret' was being taken by Border and getting a larger share than in its region of origin, but again possibly because ITV coverage was more complete.
I do hope we don't get another tedious, point-missing England v Scotland thread here.
Interesting that in the first one I've found, 'Chimera' was Top 10, ahead of (first series, but still) Soldier Soldier and (pre-Redmond/plane crash, but still) Emmerdale - what a great series that was.
Your user name suggests good taste in music as well ...
Hahaha thank you!
(I also remember Bob Mills, I think, commenting on the similarity of Brian Moore's goal call in that game to Dolly Parton's "Jolene", but ITV only showed highlights; the BBC alone showed it live so it wasn't as if there was a split audience.)
Interesting that they speculate on Points of View inviting contributions by email - it would be, in fact, the first BBC programme to have that facility, and at one point its producer Bernard Newnham supposedly had the only internet connection in TVC.
Interesting (in the context of repeated debates on here), that the Wimbledon men's final of 1991, back when it was on BBC2 because that was where Sunday Grandstand was, got more viewers than the women's final on BBC1. And I think that was the last year they didn't show the French Grand Prix live because of Wimbledon - from 1992 it was live on BBC1.
And the only non-soap (or non-weekly drama if The Bill doesn't count) to get more viewers than the first episode of Chimera was ... Big Break.
Until 1981 some of the Western Isles only had the BBC. I can remember reading the TV Times in February 1981 and one of the articles was about the Western Isles finally being able to receive ITV.
Also with regard to Border, it served both England and Scotland and Cairngorm Cabaret would have been part of a roster of STV and Grampian programmes we had such as Scotsport, the Melrose Sevens, the SNP Conference and any live Scottish football STV had the rights to. Also I can remember eagerly awaiting the premiere of Enter The Dragon, only to be told the Border region had highlights of a Scotland game.