Tuesday's ratings: 'Skins' series premiere takes 459k on E4

The sixth series of Skins began with nearly 460k on E4 last night, according to overnight data.



Titled 'Everyone', the episode attracted 459k (2.6%) from 10pm, down from last year's audience of 823k (4.6%). However, it did premiere on 4oD one week earlier.

Elsewhere, Celebrity Big Brother averaged 2.43m (9.5%) in its 9pm timeslot - beating Wonderland's 1.24m (4.8%) on BBC Two and Coppers' 2.18m (8.5%) on Channel 4 (+1: 390/2.1%).

Channel 5 also aired World's Toughest Trucker (342k/1.5%) from 7pm, Police Interceptors (1.11m/4.3%) from 8pm and Celebrity Wedding Planner (787k/4.3%) in the 10pm hour.

On ITV1, 8pm's Cornwall with Caroline Quentin took 4.24m (16.6%) and 189k (0.8%) on +1. Above Suspicion claimed 5.73m (22.4%) from 9pm with a further 217k (1.2%) on timeshift.

BBC One's Inside Out was seen by 3.59m (15.1%) from 7.30pm. Panorama got 2.45m (9.5%) from 8.30pm, The Royal Bodyguard struggled with 2.79m (11.1%) and Mrs Brown's Boys had 5.22m (20%).

BBC Two's lineup before Wonderland consisted of Baking Made Easy (1.3m/5.8%), A Question of Sport (1.11m/4.6%), University Challenge (2.83m/11%) and An Island Parish (1.78m/6.9%). Mock the Week amused 1.47m (7.2%) from 10pm.

Channel 4's Superscrimpers: Waste Not, Want Not was watched by 1.43m (5.5%) from 8pm (+1: 355k/1.4%) before 9pm's Coppers. Later on, Party Paramedics had 1.42m (7.8%) from 10pm (+1: 200k/2.2%).

Overall, ITV1 posted a convincing primetime victory with 26.1% (+1: 0.7%) ahead of BBC One's 19.2%. BBC Two's 6.4% beat Channel 4's 6.1% and Channel 5's 5.1%.

Today's TV Guide

'Skins' premiere actually drew in 1.2m, says Channel 4



The audience for the premiere of the new series of Skins more than doubled when including all the consumption across digital devices in the two weeks around transmission.

Titled 'Everyone', the new Skins episode attracted 459k (2.6%) from 10pm on E4 on January 23, well down on last year's audience of 823k for the premiere of series five.

This figure represents the 'overnight' audience, essentially the people who sat down to watch the programme at its transmission time, according to data compiled by audience measurement body BARB.

However, Channel 4 has released 'consolidated' data for the programme which it claims actually doubles the audience when factoring in consumption on other platforms.

Everyone premiered on 4oD a week earlier that its launch on E4, while it was also available for seven days after transmission on the catch-up TV service.

Factoring in on-demand/catch-up TV viewing, and all personal video recorder requests on services such as Sky+ and Freeview+, Channel 4 said that the series six premiere of Skins actually pulled in a total audience of more than 1.2m viewers.

Broadcasters are increasingly moving away from using just overnight figures to evaluate the popularity of their programmes, despite 90.6% of all linear television viewing being done live.

The BBC regularly reports its audience figures using a Live+7 system, which collates the overall consumption of programmes across live, catch-up TV and PVRs.

For example, an episode of The Apprentice aired on May 25 last commanded a total audience of 10.15m viewers over its seven-day period using Live+7 data, considerably more than the 7.46m on just overnight figures.

BARB's official figures do not cover TV viewing on other devices, such as laptops, tablets and smartphones, but the body has been monitoring these viewing devices since 2005.

The collected data suggests that there is an additional 1.2% of TV viewing via other devices, and that rises to 2.9% for 16 to 34-year-olds, and this increased demand among young people is particularly key to monitor around a show such as Skins.

It's irrelevant as far as advertisers are concerned, they only care how many people watched the commercials. Most people watching on catch-up will have skipped the commercials wherever possible. Hell, I even use them during live broadcasts as an excuse to fetch another beer!