Christmas Day Ratings

Borrowed from another forum, here are Christmas Day's ratings

1 …. 14.3 (53.3%) …. Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death (20:30) BBC1
2 …. 11.7 (50.5%) …. Doctor Who (18:00) BBC1
3 …. 11.5 (44.9%) …. EastEnders (21:00) BBC1
4 …. 10.0 (41.7%) …. The Royle Family (21:30) BBC1
5 …. 9.9 (40.6%) …. EastEnders (20:00) BBC1
6 …. 9.5 (47.1%) …. BBC News (17:45) BBC1
7 …. 8.6 (35.0%) …. Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special 2008 (19:00) BBC1
8 …. 7.4 (30.0%) …. Coronation Street (19:00) ITV1
9 …. 7.2 (39.8%) …. Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (16:30) BBC1
10 … 6.4 (42.6%) …. The Queen (15:00) BBC1
11 …. 5.6 (30.9%) …. Blackadder Rides Again (22:30) BBC1
12 …. 5.2 (20.4%) …. Dancing on Ice at Christmas (20:00) ITV1
13 …. 4.8 (20.5%) …. Emmerdale (18:00) ITV1
14 …. 4.7 (31.1%) …. Shark Tale (15:00) BBC1
15 …. 3.8 (15.9%) …. It'll Be Alright on the Night (21:30) ITV1
16 …. 3.7 (30.6%) …. Top of the Pops Christmas Special (14:00) BBC1
17 …. 3.6 (17.7%) …. ITV News and Weather (17:45) ITV1
18 …. 3.3 (20.0%) …. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (15:00) ITV1
19 …. 3.1 (22.1%) …. BBC News (23:30) BBC1
20 … 2.8 (24.2%) …. BBC News (13:45) BBC1
21 … 2.7 (11.1%) …. Dad's Army (20:00) BBC2
22 … 2.5 (22.5%) …. The Two Ronnies Christmas Show (13:00) BBC1
23 … 2.4 (22.2%) …. The Santa Clause 2 (11:15) BBC1
24 … 2.2 (11.8%) …. Stanley Baxter - Now and Then (22:30) ITV1
25 … 2.1 ( 8.4%) …. Blackadder's Christmas Carol (19:00) BBC2

The figures for BBC1 may turn out incorrect as they were running 7 minutes late all evening, so some programmes may go up and some may go down when the officials are released

Very low for Corrie and Emmerdale.

ITV don't seem to be able to win either way, which is a shame - and of course the BBC were playing dirty tactics last night in seriously over running for most of the evening.

To be fair though, the BBC had one of it's strongest Christmas night line ups for years - I actually think overall after a few poor years this years Christmas schedules across the board are a bit stronger than usual, though I still can't find anything to watch most of the day!

How on earth did the Beeb manage to be 7 minutes out? On the most important telly day of the year, too.

I'm glad to see Wallace and Gromit as the top show of the day, and the year though - beating X Factor purely on overnights! There's something good about this country after all

Well most of the programmes lasted longer than the slot they were put in. I think Doctor who lasted about 65 minutes, but was in a 60 minute slot.

In theory, Wallace and Gromit could well turn out to be the highest rated programme broadcast on any channel on Christmas Day since the final Only Fools and Horses five years ago, which got 16 million. It's only rival is last year's EastEnders which got 14.3, but the final figures are often higher than the overnights so this could well beat it.

This though would be helped due to being in between two episodes of EastEnders, and the overrun would have increased that even more.

Each of the EastEnders episodes lasted for 36 minutes. Doctor Who was 61 minutes and Strictly Come Dancing was 57 minutes. I know this because I recorded the programmes on my TopUp Tv Box.

I was expecting SCD to be the one overrunning, they're GREAT with time.

Isn't there some sort of rule against this that unless it's due to some unforeseen circumstances, programmes billed to start at 8pm for example have to start between 7.58 and 8.04 IIRC.

And if there isn't, perhaps there should be - I think in the US they're expect to start virtually on the hour.

It really was a poor show from the BBC - not in trying to sabotage ITV, but in leaving a large proportion of it's viewers with badly timed recordings - on a day I imagine alot of people end up recording episodes and watching them once they've got rid of the family.

For 2 episodes of EastEnders, a prerecorded, scripted show to overrun... that's pretty shoddy. The Doctor Who team at least ask when they want 10 minutes extra