E4 ratings are ‘over selective’ Making an old man very happy

Your report on E4’s early ratings (MW February 8) took a selective look at a tiny handful of the channel’s programmes and thus failed to give a rounded picture of its performance in its first few weeks on air.

Yes, some non-peak programmes on E4 have attracted audiences of a few thousand viewers, but it is an everyday occurrence in multi-channel television. On the day you highlight (February 6), Sky One had an audience of 1,000 viewers for Melrose Place, while a repeat of The Vice at 10pm on ITV2 got 3,000. If the market leader for a decade still records negligible audiences, is it surprising that a channel on air for just 27 days has low ratings as well?

You also quote “an observer” as saying that Friends is the only E4 programme “capable of attracting more than 200,000 viewers”. ER, Ally McBeal and Trigger Happy TV have already comfortably exceeded that figure, with ER having peaked at 480,000 viewers and Friends at 730,000. More importantly, the audiences for those shows have grown as E4 settles into the channel line-up. Neither ITV2 nor BBC Choice has ever recorded a rating for programmes in excess of 300,000.

The latest consolidated figures show that during its transmission hours (4pm-4am), E4 is already the third most popular basic pay-TV service in digital homes with a 1.2 per cent audience share – behind only Sky One and UK Gold.

E4 is work in progress and as it grows it will continue to experience failures along with its successes. But Channel 4 is proud of – not “embarrassed” by – what has been achieved so far in what has been, by any measure, a very successful launch period.

David Brook

Director of strategy and development

Channel 4