Emmerdale Special beats EastEnders

From MediaGuardian..

There was not much to shout about for BBC1 last night, when an hour-long Emmerdale special once again knocked EastEnders' ratings for six.

The Emmerdale special, featuring the double wedding of Viv Winsor to Bob Hope - who were getting hitched for the second time - and her daughter Donna to Marlon Dingle, was watched by 8.7 million viewers and attracted a 40% audience share between 7pm and 8pm.

In the half hour when it went was head to head with EastEnders, Emmerdale attracted 8.5 million viewers compared with the BBC1 soap's 6.3 million.

Not really suprised, Emmerdale has improved over the past year.

yep i agree, alot indeed. Eastenders is falling I think

Or maybe it was the fact that Emmerdale started 30 minutes before? Just a hunch...

Nope, 2006 so far has been a dreadful year for EastEnders IMO.

If EE did a special starting at 7 through to 8 and Emmerdale was at 7.30pm the opposite would be true....

The real story of the night IMHO was how poorly the Brits did! Quite surprising for such a big event. No wonder ITV are crowing about the soaps instead.

The story is from MediaGuardian.

It's quite significant that Emmerdale got over 2 million more viewers. It wasn't exactly close

Hardly surprising news, Emmerdale usually come out on top when they go head to head.

I didnt watch tv at all between 7-8pm last night. I no longer watch Emmerdale because its boring drivel. Its ITV's fault for putting it on so much that has made me switch off. Mind you if Corrie went to 10 episodes a week id still watch that obviously.

Funny that since EastEnders has been No.1 more weeks this year then Corrie has. And most episodes now bring in 10 - 11 million and Emmerdale's average of late has been around 9. I never watch Emmerdale so I duly watched EastEnders and, as usual, it was fantastic thanks to the writing of Tony Jordan.

I myself think it's a shame that ITV do this every now and again as the those who enjoy both soaps have to choose. It's just one of their quick ratings fixes which they seem to enjoy doing from time to time.

In this case Emmerdale started first and viewers stuck with it. It would be interesting to see if the BBC3 edition of Enders gained viewers because of this.

That's not actually a statistic supported by BARB. Eastenders held the top spot for the first 2 weeks, but the last 4, Corrie has been back at the top. But hey, that's splitting hairs.

And Corrie has been at the top of the ratings most weeks since at least 2003. Corrie had a bad summer last year, they spent so long concentrating on one particular storyline (Shelly and Charlie) that the rest of the storylines were silly, but since September its improved lots and so far this year its been on top form. I dont think ive seen an episode I havent enjoyed this year so far, the one last Sunday was stupid with Tyrone/Molly but there was other stuff in the episode so I did enjoy it. And with Steve Frost as producer I think 2006 will be a lot better than 2005.

Eastenders is also repeated the same night on BBC3, and normally when Emerdale and Eastenders go head to head the later repeat gets a surge in viewers. Also Eastenders has an omnibus on Sundays on BBC 1, when you get the viewing figures for this you can judge if Eastenders is failing again.