Channel 4 overtakes BBC2

Channel 4 has achieved a higher audience share across the year than BBC2 for the first time in a decade - and only the third time in its 23-year history - it emerged yesterday.

The channel said it had avoided the decline in audience share experienced by the other terrestrial channels and maintained its overall audience share across all hours at 9.7%, compared with BBC2's year-to-date rating of 9.4%.

A spokesman said Channel 4's "outstanding creative strength" was at the heart of its ratings success, attributing the vintage year to its top 10 shows of 2005 which included Big Brother, Lost, Desperate Housewives, Supernanny and Jamie's School Dinners.

A BBC spokesperson said: "We have also had some quality, distinctive programming in all areas this year. What is most important for the BBC is that its portfolio of services and channels work as a whole to reach everybody - through radio, television, online and interactive -and our research tells us that we are currently reaching 95% of the population. It is not just about the performance of individual channels, and nor is it just about share; to take these in isolation tells you only part of the story."

Considering the BBC2 schedule I'm not surprised at this news

No surprise at all - didn't C4 also beat BBC2 last year?

BBC2 has been badly affected by BBC3 getting the best of the innovative new comedy and drama while BBC4 has taken over the documentary side.

The changes to the BBC2 schedule in recent years have been terrible - the 6-8pm has lost it's niche, but loyal, audience built up over years with Buffy and Star Trek etc. - while it doesn't really bother with much after Newsnight either. Weekends are nothing to write home about, and BBC2 keep changing their comedy night and hence lose their audience.

I blame 'The Simpsons'.

There are loyal, often young people who tune in to watch them. Myself, 15, our schedule was Channel Three's 5 o'clock slot, then went to B.B.C.2. for the Simpsons, and stayed there for a long time. With the 'Fresh Prince...', etc. When 'The Simpsons' moved, we now go to Channel Four, and stay there, and I got into 'Hollyoaks'. Then I watch the next episode on E4. With trailers, I have slowly watched more and more C.4..

Enough about me though.

I think the cricket got more viewers too.

Rob. Cheers 4 reading.

Yes they seem to have this strange situation lately where after Newsnight they will show one programme and then cross over to News 24 at about 12.20am

Channels in the 70s didn't closedown that early!

EXACTLY
Which begs the question - Does the BBC have too many channels and not enough quality programming to fill them suitably?

Yes they did - and earlier. Sometimes as early as 11:30pm.

Don't forget BBC2 won "Channel of the Year" in 2003 despite not being fully 24 hours.

I think what we're witnessing now is the next stage of evolution in broadcasters having ridiculously oversized channel portfolios. After moving to a position where much the same content is spread over more channels, we're now starting to see more channels operating for fewer hours. It's quite telling that all channels launched as a result of the BBC's 2002 digital strategy have been part time, and also to see that ITV are going the same way with the launch of the part time ITV4 and a pending part time kid's channel.


Indeed, but then C4 have just lot that, so it'll be interesting to see what happens next year.


Indeed, the 'traditional' parts of BBC2 have gone to BBC4, whilst the 'new' parts of BBC2, carefully built up during the 90's, have now gone to BBC3, leaving BBC2 with no obvious role, and it's a situation which is still deteriorating; over the last year or so BBC4 has backpedalled a bit from the overly highbrow nature of it's launch, taking more programming away from BBC2's remit.

It doesn't have to be like this of course - virtually everything of interest on BBC3 and BBC4 would fit it in to BBC2 - because it did before.

Although this 'divide and conquer' approach being followed at present might work in the short term, I do believe it's going to leave the big broadcasters in very precarious positions; taken as a whole both the BBC and ITV have very strong lineups, but each individual channel is quite weak, with the same small portfolio of programmes propping the channel up. And each time you further diversify and launch another channel, that genre of programming has to be stripped from your other channels, leaving the original channel weakened.

This, I feel, is why C5 continues to improve. The business underneath is building and making more money, so they can spend more money on newer and better programming, but it still all has to fit into the same space. There is also no 'kingpin' programme which the channel can't contemplate existing without because they have so much. The longer C5 stays out of multichannel, the better it will stay and the stronger it's position will be. I don't see the inevitable second (then third, then fourth, then fifth) channels as being a good thing at all.


Indeed and I'm not expecting it to get any better either, I think BBC2 is shaping up to be the first big casualty of over diversified channels, in the end it's going to have so much taken out of it that there just won't be a reason left for it to continue to exist.


As you've probably got from the above, in my opinion, yes they do. So do ITV, so do C4, so do UKTV, so do Discovery, so do Disney, so does any broadcaster which has suddenly amassed this huge extended channel range after a long history of having only 1 or 2 channels.

I think the big crunch will come in about 10 years time - either traditional channels as we know them now will disappear and all TV will be on-demand, or they will survive but we'll see a massive reduction in the number of channels we have as broadcasters seek to re-introduce a smaller selection of better channels. Either way, the present situation of a BBC with 8 TV channels, an ITV with 5 channels and counting, etc, etc just can't viably continue - divide and you may well conquer, but divide too much and you'll need to regroup or loose the battle.