Friday, March 07, 2008
Scores on the Doors
Ashes to Ashes Ep. 5 did remarkably well in the ratings last night - 6.6m with a 28.6% share. The consolidated figures* across the series so far have increased the audience by an average of 950k per ep, which could push ep 5's ratings to 7.5m, which would be very very good indeed.**
I also note that IPlayer now has a top ten most popular downloads, and that ep. 5 of Ashes is no.1, while ep. 4 is no. 10. More good news. And which oddly makes me feel more connected to the audience - as I type this on my PC, someone somewhere is watching the episodes I wrote on a PC just like mine in a scruffy hole of an 'office' just like mine. I'm as connected to them as I am to you as you read this - doesn't that give you an eerie, ever so slightly paranoid shiver?
And all this good news doesn't just apply to me. The relevant part for those of you who aspire to write TV drama, is that the extra 800,000 people who watched Ashes to Ashes this week were watching Trial and Retribution last week, which means that they preferred to watch drama rather than football last night. Drama still pulls them in! Across a variety of platforms and media, there is still a large popular audience for the stuff that we make up.
Feeling better?
You might think it's shallow to be preoccupied with viewing figures - what about my artistic integrity, dammit - but you're wrong. Audience figures are everything.
Somewhere in the suspiciously ordered desktops*** of The People Who Really Make Decisions there is an unbelievably precise breakdown of how many people of what kind watched how much of the show that you wrote. If it's the right number of people of the right kind, and they watched it to the end when the trail for the next show has a chance to keep them watching the channel, the next time your name is proposed as a writer on a new show, the suggestion might be greeted favourably; the wrong number of people of the wrong sort - maybe the suggestion won't be discussed for as long as you might hope...
*which include 'time shifted viewers', i.e. people who recorded it to watch later, and the figures that really matter for those shadowy, omni-powerful figures known as 'Commissioners'. However, they don't include the figures for those viewing via BBC IPlayer. Yet - but they will, oh yes they definitely will...the future is coming, Fumble.
**Unless those 800k people who watched T&R last week all taped Ashes to watch later...
***I just bet they're neat.
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4 comments:
Ah, now I wasn't sure they counted iPlayer, so that's cool. People are asking over at mine: did LoM or AtA do better ratings-wise? Do you know, at least for your eps?
Word verification: pigoer
Intriguing.
Well done on the viewing figures. That answers something I've been trying to find out. Been trying to access ratings for A2A each week, (to compare against LoM), but have met with limited success; all the sites want a fat fee for the info.
Does anyone know of any sites where up to date UK TV ratings are made available for free?
lucy: So far AtA is averaging at least 500k or so more than LoM 1 & 2, but LoM 2 was scheduled against boring bloody Champions League footie for almost the whole run, and that's usually a ratings killer. However, even when you take that into account I suspect AtA might come out on top.
Perhaps even more significant than the raw figures - which really are very good, better than I for one expected - is that AtA slaughtered Trial and Retribution, which has been a guaranteed winner for ITV with a very loyal audience up till now.
I'm gleeful about the figures since the slow death of afterlife - screwed by poor scheduling in my view - has made me acutely aware of how important they are.
Danny: Consolidated figures (which run two weeks behind) are freely available on BARB.co.uk. League tables - even better! TV ratings turns into Subbuteo!
Thanks for the link, Mark. Just the job.
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