Sunday 06th July 2008
Sunday was a day for sports fans as BBC1 covered the men’s singles final at Wimbledon and ITV1 headed to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix. ITV1’s F1 coverage averaged 4.4m (36.2%) between 12:00 – 3:20pm, no doubt helped by the fact that British driver Lewis Hamilton finished in first place. The race started at 1pm, averaging 5.6m between 1pm – 2:45pm. The audience maxed out at 6m (48%) between 2:30pm – 2:45pm as Hamilton took the chequered flag.

Saturday 05th July 2008
It was all change for BBC1 on Saturday evening as the fourth series of Doctor Who reached its conclusion and two new entertainment shows were added to the line-up. The 13th episode of Doctor Who drew a stellar 9.4m (45.9%) between 6:45 – 7:45, giving an excellent TI™ score of 196. This was by far and away the highest-rating episode of the current series, beating the opening episode by 1m viewers. It helped bring the average audience for the 13 episodes to 7.2m, making it slightly more popular than series three (which averaged 7m last year).

Monday 30th June 2008
At 9:15 last night, 10.4m viewers were watching BBC1 as British tennis player Andy Murray staged a remarkable comeback to reach the quarter-finals of the Wimbledon championship, giving the channel a 43.6% share in that quarter-hour. This meant that Wimbledon 2008 actually attracted more viewers than ITV1’s Coronation Street between 9:15 – 9:30pm. The tennis coverage was due to end at 8pm on BBC2, but the BBC tore up its schedules and hastily switched coverage across to BBC1 at 8:30 to stay with the match as it went to five sets. This brought in some of the EastEnders audience to the tennis, with the Wimbledon 2008 audience rocketing from 4.8m on BBC2 at 8:15pm to 6.9m at 8:30pm on BBC2. The audience then continued to grow to the 10.4m peak as Murray claimed a hard-fought victory.

For a more detailed summary of the week’s television, please visit http://www.attentional.com/blog.php