The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

BBC ITV

Downtown Abbey suffers Christmas ratings slide losing one million viewers

Author

By Gillian West, Social media manager

December 27, 2012 | 1 min read

After being beat by rival BBC in the overnight ratings for Christmas Day ITV has taken another blow as it was revealed hit show Downtown Abbey lost more than one million viewers with its Christmas Day offering.

Downtown's Christmas special, in which one of the shows main characters died, drew an audience of just 6.8 million viewers leaving it the seventh most watched programme.

Eastenders triumphed on Christmas Day with an audience of 9.4 million, followed by ITV's Coronation Street with 8.6 million, and the BBC's festive Strictly Come Dancing came in third with 7.8 million.

ITV was hoping to emulate the success of last year's Downtown Abbey Christmas special which was the fourth most watch programme in 2011s festive line up with 8.1 million viewers.

The two hour long show has received criticism for broadcasting one minute of adverts for every three minutes of the show. The figures do not include the possible viewers who may have recorded the programme to watch at a later date or those who will watch online after the programme has aired.

BBC ITV

More from BBC

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +