BBC WINS THE ELECTION RATINGS BATTLE AGAINST ITV, SKY AND CHANNEL 4

BBC1 drew the biggest TV audience of election night as the Labour landslide was revealed at 10pm - while Channel 4 doubled its audience compared to 2019.

But the total number of TV viewers watching the exit poll predictions at 10pm, across all channels, was down by nearly 3million on the ratings for the previous election. Across the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky News and GB News around 7.3m watched last night’s results in the hour from 10pm, a 58% share of the audience but a huge dip on the 10million who tuned in for 2019’s exit poll results.

BBC1’s Election 2024, fronted by Laura Kuenssberg and Clive Myrie, drew 4.2m for the exit poll hour, a 2m drop on the 6.1m watching in 2019. But a spokeswoman said that 11.9m tuned into our TV coverage for at least three minutes, which was “more than any other broadcaster” and represented the total BBC audience across all programmes on all channels.

Overall it was a good night for C4 thanks to the skills of Emily Maitlis and Krishnan Guru-Murthy alongside popular political podcasters Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell. Channel 4 said it had attracted the biggest young audience of the night outside BBC1 – “comfortably beating” ITV, with data showing that C4’s share of 16-34s was 15.5% compared with ITV’s 8.2%.

Britain Decides with The Rest is Politics and Gogglebox doubled the audience of its 2019 coverage, pulling in 930,000 viewers for the 10pm hour compared with the previous 466,000 when it was fronted by hosts including Katherine Ryan and Rylan Clark, A spokesman said that coverage peaked with 1.1million and the share of the audience had grown steadily throughout the night, overtaking ITV between 1-2am.

News boss Louisa Compton said: “We are delighted that our election night broadcast shook up TV coverage and drew more young people than any channel aside from BBC One. The ITN Productions team did a tremendous job of creating a noisy, disruptive and insightful alternative that attracted more than three million viewers in the first few hours. We set out to provide the most informed analysis of any broadcaster and we certainly achieved it.”

ITV lost 1million viewers for the crucial 10pm hour, having got 2.3million in 2019, compared with 1.3m this time around. The Sky News election coverage saw a slight increase in those tuning into the exit poll, with 530,000 watching Kate Burley compared to the 512,000 five years ago. It was Labour’s big night but, in the fashion stakes, there was another clear winner in the form of the pink suit - outfit of choice for Kuenssberg on BBC1, Nicola Sturgeon on ITV and both Nadine Dorries and Harriet Harman on Channel 4.

There had been shock when former culture minister Dorries, who went all out to try and privatise Channel 4, was announced as one of their election night pundits. But in the event she was priceless, repeatedly defending pal Boris Johnson to the annoyance of the rest of the panel (who really shouldn’t have been surprised).

Many viewers found watching Nadine and fellow ex-Tory Kwasi Kwarteng squirm as the results got ever worse for the Tories great fun, topped by Nadine’s face as the scale of the disaster became clear at 10pm, described by one reviewer as looking “like she’d stepped in dog poo”.

Her scowl summed up the whole night for her party and explains why she and Kwarteng, booked to appear until 3am, slipped out well ahead of that during an ad break. ITV was accused of being a bit “male, pale and stale” by its own panellist Robert Peston, presumably including himself in the criticism. He was flanked by Ed Balls, George Osborne and main anchor Tom Bradby, leaving viewers thankful for Sturgeon in her pink suit.

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2024-07-05T14:38:07Z dg43tfdfdgfd