Britain's ITV1 Narrows Audience Gap with BBC Rival

Latest TV audience share figures from Britain's Independent Television Commission show the gap between terrestrial giants BBC1 and ITV1 narrowing.

For the twelve months to the end of September, ITV1 -- flagship channel of commercial network ITV -- polled a 24% share, the same as in the last report (covering the year to June).

However, the BBC's leading channel saw its share slip from 26.3% in the last ITC study to 26.1%. The publicly funded broadcaster's second station, BBC2, was also down, slipping from 11.3% to 11.2%.

Of the other terrestrial broadcasters, Channel 4 fell from 9.6% to 9.5%, while Five remained on 6.4%.

The failure of any terrestrial channel to post a rise in audience share in part reflects the migration of viewers to multichannel TV. Nevertheless, Sky One -- the biggest non-terrestrial station -- was also down, falling from 1.7% to 1.6%.

Data sourced from: BrandRepublic (UK); additional content by WARC staff