I hear from a reliable source that Who Wants To Be A Millionaire averaged over 6m last night.

Thursday 23rd December Overnights
BBC One (inc. HD)
13:30- Only Fools and Horses: 2.15m (21.2%)
19:00- The Nativity: 5.1m (22.1%)
19:30- EastEnders: 9.26m (38.5%)
20:00- How Science Changed The World: 2.69m (10.7%)
21:00- New Tricks: 3.78m (15.4%)
22:00- BBC News at Ten: 4.10m (17.5%)

BBC Two
20:00- The Two Ronnies Christmas Special 1984: 3.35m (13.4%)
21:00- Being Ronnie Corbett: 2.6m (10.6%)
22:00- The Two Ronnies: The Studio Recordings: 2.6m (11.1%)
23:30- The Goodies: 1.01m (9.1%)

ITV1 (exc. HD)
19:00- Emmerdale: 6.97m (29.7%)
19:30- Tonight: 3.04m (12.6%)
20:00- Emmerdale: 8.08m (32.9%)
20:30- Coronation Street: 9.34m (36.3%)
21:00- Live: Celebrity Who Wants to Be A Millionaire: 6.30m (25.8%)
22:15- ITV News & Weather: 3.16m (14.5%)

Channel 4 (inc. HD)
20:00- Christmas with Gordon Ramsay: 1.08m (4.3%)
21:00- The House That Made Me: 638k (2.6%)
22:00- 8 Out of 10 Cats Christmas Special: 1.31m (5.9%)

Channel 5 (inc. HD)
17:30- Neighbours: 1.14m (6.1%)
20:00- Demolition: The Unsinkable Ship: 793k (3.2%)
21:00- 300: 1.40m (6.4%)

ITV2
21:00- Kerry Katona: The Next Chapter: 621k (2.5%) , +1: 180k
22:00- Celebrity Juice: 851k (3.8%) , +1: 235k

Low for the first Emmerdale, but the second one did well. Coronation Street still ahead of EastEnders, but I suspect even including HD the share may be lower.

Didn't expect Millionaire to do that well, but really good rating for it considering its been ~3/4m for the past few years. Given that all of ITV's shows finished earlier than billed (or started later in Millionaire's case), the tape-checked ratings will be higher.

Any ratings for The Goodies last night?

not by much

Including HD, it'll be 0.2m or 0.3m. Then tape-checked it'll be ~0.5m to 0.6m... I think.

Fantastic for WWTBAM-inc HD it will be around 3m up on how it rates on Tuesdays. It had an excellent slot with weak competition and a strong lead in, plus their were celebs and obviously the live element-all these factors contributed to the huge figure. Hopefully this will encourage ITV to have more live shows.

Interesting that the 2nd Emmerdale was over 1m up on the first. Very low share for the first one aswell. Not quite sure why. Corrie slightly low too, but I suspect with HD and tape checked it will be around 10m. BBC1, Ch4 and Ch5 all flopped big style at 8pm.

I've added the Goodies rating.

A fully deserved humiliation for BBC1 there!

No surprise for me that Millionaire did that well. I don't subscribe to the view that this means "look how well it could do if it was live all the time", it was more a case of BBC1 running up the white flag - unfathomably - and delivering it a default audience.

As I've said for weeks, a New Tricks repeat at 9pm on "Christmas Eve Eve" is completely unacceptable by the BSI when BBC1 should be warming its audience up for Christmas. "Everyone's home for Christmas", as they keep telling us...

Shock to see Coro St down in the 9m's and against such derisory BBC1 competition that it also lost out to BBC2. So much for it still being on its tram crash high and maintaining 11m viewers all through Christmas as some on here are hoping...

Hollyoaks tanked in its unusual 6pm slot on Channel 4 yesterday: 533k (2.5%)

The 6.30pm episode had 920k (4.1%).

1m is pretty good for 11.30pm on BBC2!

Sadly, I don't think these old Goodies eps have stood the test of time. Not quite as funny as I vaguely remembered them from childhood.

Do we know how the Ronnie Barker BAFTA tribute repeat did at 10.30, before the Goodies - it may have delivered a healthy lead-in?

Any idea how many people watched the episodes on E4 the night before? Be interesting to see if they are higher than usual or not.

I think C4 can face facts its love affair with Gordon is over.(he should go back to ITV and do hells kitchen).

theres no way with his C4 contract nearly up they can afford the same deal he got last time he simply isnt drawing in the numbers anymore.

Horrid ratings for Hollyoaks.

rzt, do you have a breakdown for ITV1 from 7pm to 10:15pm? Interested to see how Millionaire did across the 75 minutes and also if the soaps were affected by finishing early.

22:30- Ronnie Barker BAFTA Tribute: 2.36m (13.5%)


E4 on the night before had:

19:00- 509k , +1: 144k
19:30- 491k , +1: 174k


ITV1 (exc. HD) breakdown:

Serves them right for messing with timeslots. Is the first figure not the lowest ever?

Some facts.
- Best rating for Millionaire since the Coronoation Street special in August 2008 (6.4 million).
- Best rating for a Christmas celebrity special since Christmas Day 2005 (6.5 million).

Thanks for that. So not really all that different from usual it seems. A shame because the 6pm episode was great and kick starts a new storyline in the show.

Has anybody got the ratings for this weeks Deal or No Deal Scrooge or Santa specials?

Yeah I believe so for an original C4 airing. Previous lowest ever rating was 640k.


It probably beat both of those ratings once HD is factored in, which should take it up to ~6.5/6.6m.

Thanks. So the tape-checked ratings, excluding HD are:

19:00 - Emmerdale: 7.29m
20:00 - Emmerdale: 8.09m
20:30 - Coronation Street: 9.53m
21:00 - Who Wants to be a Millionaire?: 6.38m

I'm not having that about Earthanasia. One of the finest half hours of comedy that I have ever seen.Kitten Kong, Movies, Scoutrageous, Eckythump, Almighty Cod, Politics, Animals and quite a few others still stand up very well in my view.

Can you tell I'm a bit of a fan?

the good news however is that you are seeing some postitive therads about hollyoaks on the soap forum, and there seems to be a few returnees as well.

I only have yesterday's rating, which was: 1.75m (11.9%) excluding C4+1.

Worth noting that between 5-6pm, Channel 4 rated really badly compared to usual, averaging 767k, well below the usual ~2m. The immediate lead-in for Hollyoaks' 6pm episode was something like 400k!

Preach to the choir Robbie. BBC1 shut down until Christmas Eve and that is why Millionaire did much better than it normally would have done. This is a piss poor schedule for BBC1 in the run up to Christmas and I'm glad that George Dixon is buggering off to Channel 4!