TELEVISION / Statistics

ONE of a series of Lenten resolutions suggested yesterday on The Big Breakfast was that GMTV should give up broadcasting and everyone should turn over to Channel 4. Recent news has suggested that a lot of people are doing this anyway, and latest figures show that The Big Breakfast's audience has shifted up another notch: its quarter-hour peak audience has hit 1.3 million, the highest since it started five months ago. GMTV's quarter-hour peak is still 1.7 million (having started at 2 million) and the The Big Breakfast is now level-pegging with BBC 1's Breakfast News.

Another ratings victory for Channel 4: on Saturday 13 February when its Love Weekend was up against A Night of Love on BBC 2, Channel 4 grabbed 30 per cent of the audience (it usually scores an average of about nine per cent on a Saturday night) while BBC 2 attracted nine per cent. The Naked Chat Show, an element of The Love Weekend, had an audience of 4 million, 38 per cent of the audience share. Not surprisingly, films were the most-watched parts of the programming: Dirty Dancing (C4) 5.63 million; Truly, Madly, Deeply (BBC 2) 3.51 million.

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