From the same Friday last year (March 21st - Good Friday)

Emmerdale 7.42m
Corrie (7.30) 10.28m
Eastenders 10.05m
Corrie (8.30) 9.65m

All considerable down on this year, but I can't remember if the weather was worse or not.

Thanks. The soap ratings look a bit low for last night, and it's particularly suprising to see the 2nd Corrie only getting 35%.

The ITV comedy shows improved from last week as expected, but obviously both are rating very poorly.

Do you have the ratings for Pushing Daisies which was at 22:35?

Thanks sonny!

QI seemed to benefit from ITV's poor competition last night. ITV's comedies are rating appaulingly. An average of around 1.6m over the hour is awful and even though Al Murray in particular may be bad, I just can't understand how the ratings are so low. I expected Murray to be low, but around 2-2.5m low, not almost sub 1m with only 3.5m watching on BBC1. ITV seemed to have made a stand against dropping any shows from their slots now, because those 2 shows a couple of years ago would have been dropped by episode 2.

Ramsay seemed to benefit again and a decent start for Genius in a tough 10pm slot for BBC2.

Any ratings for the BBC and ITV 10pm News bulletins and FIVE's ratings from 8-11pm?

I think it was quite cold last Easter, but I'm a bit worried about this year's soap ratings being low.

What will they be like when the clocks go forward?

Quite low, I would imagine. Emmerdale is struggling to hit 7m right now, and it's March. I think it's figures in the summer will be down to around 5m possibly.

All soaps are quite a bit down from last year. If we are to compare the official ratings so far this year, compared to last year until the same point, the declines are:

Coronation Street: -752,300 (-6.9%)
EastEnders: -438,340 (-4.7%)
Emmerdale: 513,800 (-6.4%)

None of the soaps have done particularly well in terms of holding their audience; a 6.9% fall for Corrie is quite alarming!

Thank you for posting those averages, rzt.

I hate to think what would happen to the ratings this summer if we had some really hot spells of weather like we did in 2003, 2005 and 2006.

It is possible, however, that the soaps ratings during this summer might fare favourably to last year. This is because last year during the summer we had Euro 2008, and the soaps were moved around the schedule and tough competition meant some dire ratings. Obviously this year, there's no football tournament to cause such troubles.

Obviously the weather's a factor, but if it's similar to last year I wouldn't be surprised if all 3 soaps post better ratings for this summer period compared to last summer.

Back in 2007, EastEnders and Coronation Street got higher ratings in that summer compared to 2006, which had the World Cup. Though, it didn't stop both soaps still averaging less for the entire year of 2007 compared to 06.

I hadn't thought about the football thing. No Olympics this year, either.

Where is next year's World Cup taking place? Is it going to be another case of 5.00pm and 7.45pm kick-offs for UK viewers?

South Africa next year. Yeah, there'll be something like 2pm, 5pm and 8pm kick-offs. The schedules will be really affected for those few weeks, so I don't think the soaps (as well as many other shows) will rate any good during that period.

It's in South Africa, and the kick-offs are set to be at 11.30am, 2pm and 6.30pm for UK viewers.

Really?! That seems a bit early for the main primetime matches, I must say. I thought 8pm was pretty standard for evening world cup matches in our timezone, but clearly not.

No prospect of slipping soap episodes in before the k/o if matches are going start at 6.30pm!

I just had a check on the Official World Cup website, and it says the matches will be 13:30, 16:00, 20:30 local time. Which would be 12:30, 15:00, 19:30 BST (UK Time) I think.

Which sounds about right, because I read an interview a few weeks ago with a person from ITV saying that they don't have to commision as much drama next year as the World Cup matches will be taking up a considerable amount of the primetime summer schedule.

Yeah, they look about right. An ITV schedule will probably look like this, then:

6.45pm Emmerdale
7.15pm World Cup 2010
9.30pm Coronation Street
10.00pm News at Ten

With BBC1 going:

6.45pm The One Show
7.15pm Match of the Day Live
9.30pm Eastenders
10.00pm BBC News at Ten

Nice to have variety in the schedules, eh?

LOL!

Might mean a few late nights for soap fans if games go to extra time. Although, maybe the BBC and ITV will try to schedule soaps on non-football nights once the knockout stages begin.

I remember one World Cup (1990?) where, one night, EastEnders was meant to begin at around 9.30, but ended up starting around 10.20. I think! Maybe I'm recovering false memories, there!

Sorry yes, I converted the times to GMT rather than BST.

The soap ratings are low, but then again it was Friday. I expect Corrie will be back to 10 million on Monday..unless some people have taken a leap out of my book and stopped watching soaps altogether?

This episode of EastEnders was the one in which Tanya buried alive Max and then fall out from it the following Monday was watched by nearly 12 million viewers. So, that explain the big fall for EastEnders compare to the same episode this year.

The fact that QI seems to be doing better up against comedy on ITV than it was previously against crime drama really speaks volumes about Moving Wallpaper and Al Murray.

I still don't think the movement of QI to BBC One has been a particularly worthwhile success though. I suppose its relatively cheap programming that can secure an acceptable 4.5 million. Probably the reason why 'Would I Lie to You' got its recommission. Leaves BBC Two in a bit of a hole though - you wonder, sometimes, just how well BBC Two might do in growing its share if it were allowed to keep QI, Weakest Link, The Apprentice, Masterchef, Have I Got News. etc. It could be bucking the terrestrial downward trend.

Perhaps a better comparison between this year and last year, then, would be to see how many viewers the hour-long Wedding episode gets on April 2nd, especially as the BBC are trailing it already - and with an epic trailer.

I think you might be correct. The wedding episode will see the climax of year-long (well, nearly a year) storyline. I hope it rates as EastEnders highest watched episode (so far) of the year as its quite a big episode.

Back when Corrie would regularly bumped to about 9:30 or something after Wednesday football, there was one time where the game over-ran by ages meaning Corrie was shifted back to a ridiculous hour and in the end ITV decided to repeat the Wednesday episode on the Friday (at the regular 7:30 time), I'm guessing because the Wednesday episode rated really poorly in that timeslot. I was fairly young when this happened so perhaps I exagerated how late it really started because I was allowed up especially to see it, but I'm sure it ended up starting after 11pm.

Whether the time was made up or not, it definately happened!

BBC1 will be running late tonight because of the rugby over running, not that it matters much.

Whoops, ignore

I'm no rugby fan, but...

Ireland bidding for their first grand slam in 61 years and only 2 points ahead after being 6-0 down at half time.

Very tense for rugby fans in Ireland, but will the closeness of the game boost ratings in England and give the game higher ratings than the England match?