Premier League football nets 3 million viewers for Sky Sports

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/oct/29/sky-sports-premier-league-football-tv-ratings

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Manchester United's controversial 3-2 win over Chelsea proved more popular than ITV1 on Sunday afternoon, with a peak audience of more than 3 million viewers on Sky Sports 1.

The second part of a live Premier League football double bill, the Sky Sports channel averaged 2.12 million viewers, an 11.6% share of the audience, between 3.30pm and 7pm on Sunday, with a five-minute peak of 3.18 million, for the top-of-the-table clash.

This put Sky Sports 1 ahead of ITV1 for large chunks of Sunday afternoon, when 900,000 viewers watched The Home of Fabulous Cakes between 4.10pm and 5.10pm, and 1.5 million saw a rapid Downton Abbey repeat between 5.10pm and 6.10pm.

The first match of the afternoon, Everton's 2-2 draw with Liverpool, averaged 1.77 million (13.7%) between 1pm and 3.30pm, peaking with 2.53 million.

Later, the new episode of Downton Abbey had 9.51 million viewers, a 36.9% share, on ITV1 between 9pm and 10pm.

Downton had four times the 2.3 million (8.8%) who watched the sixth part of Andrew Marr's History of the World on BBC1, also between 9pm and 10pm.

US drama Homeland had 2.17 million viewers, an 8.3% share, at the same time on Channel 4.

Bafta-winning sketch show Harry & Paul returned to BBC2 with 1.5 million viewers, a 7.1% share, between 10pm and 10.30pm, including 127,000 on the BBC HD channel.

Harry & Paul was up against the fourth in the second series of Channel 4's Robert Popper sitcom Friday Night Dinner, which could only manage 712,000 viewers, a 3.4% share, between 10pm and 10.30pm.

E4's superhero comedy drama Misfits returned for its fourth series with 690,000 viewers, a 3.8% share between 10pm and 11.05pm, more than double the channel's slot average over the last three months.

Earlier on Channel 4, Matt Frei's US election documentary, The American Road Trip: Obama's Story, was watched by 600,0000 viewers, a 2.6% share, between 7pm and 8pm.

Channel 5 terrestrial movie premiere Next, starring Nicolas Cage and Julianne Moore, was its biggest rating show of the day with 1.65 million viewers, a 7.4% share, between 9pm and 11pm.

We end where we began – with Sky Sports – which averaged 561,000 viewers for its live coverage of the Indian Grand Prix on Sky Sports F1 between 8am and 12.45pm.

BBC1's race highlights programme had 2.78 million viewers (19.6%) between 2.05pm and 3.45pm.

All ratings are Barb overnight figures, including live, +1 (except for BBC and some other channels including Sky1) and same day timeshifted (recorded) viewing, but excluding on demand, or other – unless otherwise stated. Figures for BBC1, ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel 5 generally include ratings for their HD simulcast services, unless otherwise stated

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