Originally Posted by Dancc:
“The trouble is, when the peak is down over 1 million on last year's average, it's a difficult one to spin.
Overall last night's results show for TXF was down about 3.5m (exc. +1) / 3.3m (inc. +1) on the equivalent show last year, I believe the biggest drop we've seen so far.
Strictly meanwhile was basically stable year-on-year, logging an insignificant decline of 70k.”
It's a 22% drop which is really poor - even worse when you consider it was down on last week which had a more reasonable 13% drop (which was still a bit more than they'd like - 10% would be OK). The good news for y-o-y comparisons is that this time last year, the numbers stopped rising. There was a big jump from week 6 to week 7 but then the Sunday shows were steady to the final. Saturday shows rose every week though, so that's going to be more of an issue.
Even if it doesn't lose more momentum by the final (and it's looking like it might), a 22% decline would have it on 13.4m for the Sunday results show. Basically, they'd have given up all the increases in 2009 and 2010 and gone back to 2008 levels. 2008 levels were brilliant obviously, but they'd probably rather not have got back there in the space of a year.