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| EastEnders wins Christmas Day ratings battle for fourth year running | EastEnders wins Christmas Day ratings battle for fourth year running |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| All the talk before the traditional festive TV ratings battle was of seasonal editions of Downton Abbey and Call The Midwife. But in the end, like Christmas cracker jokes, the old ones proved the best, with BBC1's EastEnders topping the overnight ratings for the fourth year in a row. | All the talk before the traditional festive TV ratings battle was of seasonal editions of Downton Abbey and Call The Midwife. But in the end, like Christmas cracker jokes, the old ones proved the best, with BBC1's EastEnders topping the overnight ratings for the fourth year in a row. |
| The Albert Square soap had 9.4 million viewers, a 34.3% share of the audience, for its hour-long special on Christmas Day, beating its ITV1 rival, Coronation Street, into second place with 8.8 million viewers, or 34.5% of the audience. | The Albert Square soap had 9.4 million viewers, a 34.3% share of the audience, for its hour-long special on Christmas Day, beating its ITV1 rival, Coronation Street, into second place with 8.8 million viewers, or 34.5% of the audience. |
| Strictly Come Dancing followed up its triumphant 10th series with 7.8 million viewers, 33.3% of the audience, for its Christmas special, earning it third place in the festive top 10. | Strictly Come Dancing followed up its triumphant 10th series with 7.8 million viewers, 33.3% of the audience, for its Christmas special, earning it third place in the festive top 10. |
| Caroline Aherne's BBC1 sitcom The Royle Family was in fourth place with 7.7 million viewers (30.1%), just ahead of Doctor Who, in which the Time Lord battled with nightmarish snowmen, which was the fifth most popular programme of Christmas Day with 7.6 million viewers, or 33.9% of the audience. | |
| ITV1's Downton Abbey and BBC1's Call The Midwife shared sixth spot with 7.3 million viewers each. Both dramas suffered by being scheduled against the other channel's soap – Downton was up against EastEnders, and Call The Midwife was inevitably hit by going out at the same time as Coronation Street. | |
| Both dramas are likely to fare better in the consolidated viewing figures, which include people who recorded the shows and watched them during the next seven days. Those figures will not be known until the new year. | Both dramas are likely to fare better in the consolidated viewing figures, which include people who recorded the shows and watched them during the next seven days. Those figures will not be known until the new year. |
| Last Christmas, EastEnders was the most popular Christmas TV programme for people who watched it on the night, but it was toppled by Downton Abbey when timeshifted viewing was included. | Last Christmas, EastEnders was the most popular Christmas TV programme for people who watched it on the night, but it was toppled by Downton Abbey when timeshifted viewing was included. |
| Nearly all of the big shows were down compared to Christmas last year, with both EastEnders, which featured the death of fearsome Derek Branning, played by Jamie Foreman, and Coronation Street losing around half a million viewers each. | |
| It was the lowest-rating festive edition of the Albert Square soap for at least a decade. | |
| Downton Abbey, which also saw the departure of a big-name character, was also down, as was Doctor Who, which lost 1.3 million viewers year on year. | |
| The time-travelling show is likely to have suffered by being moved to an earlier teatime slot when fewer people are watching television. | |
| BBC1's Call The Midwife, which will return for a second series in the new year, had its lowest-ever audience. The BBC pointed out that the nursing drama comfortably beat Downton Abbey, by around 500,000 viewers, if the audience for ITV's timeshifted channel, ITV1+1, is excluded. | |
| The exception to the downward trend was the festive edition of Strictly Come Dancing, which added 300,000 viewers year-on-year on the back of a triumphant 10th series won by the silver-medal-winning Olympic gymnast Louis Smith. | |
| The slump in audiences for many of the top-rating festive TV shows is a further sign of the fragmentation of television viewing at the end of a year in which digital TV switchover was completed in the UK. | |
| Before the rise of digital TV channels more than 20 million viewers regularly tuned into their favourite Christmas Day show, with a festive edition of EastEnders in 1986 watched by more than 30 million people. | |
| But in an age of video on demand such as the BBC's iPlayer, and with hundreds of digital TV channels to choose from, the days of 10 million viewers tuning in at the same time to watch a single Christmas TV show, let alone 20 million, appear to be a thing of the past. | |
| It is the fourth year in a row that EastEnders has topped the festive overnight figures. | |
| The Queen's annual Christmas message had 8.7 million viewers across BBC1, ITV1 and Sky1 at 3pm, the vast majority of them (6.3m) watching on BBC1. | |
| It was the first of the Queen's festive addresses to be broadcast in 3D, and 36,000 viewers watched it with the extra dimension on the BBC's HD channel. Figures for Sky's 3D broadcast of the 10-minute programme, produced by Sky News, were not yet available. | |
| The BBC traditionally dominates Christmas Day viewing and this year was no exception with seven of the top 10 programmes broadcast on BBC1. | |
| Channel 4 broadcast its festive highlight on Christmas Eve, with its much-anticipated sequel to the children's animated classic The Snowman. | |
| The Snowman and the Snowdog was watched by 4.9 million viewers, an 18% share of the audience, at 8pm on Christmas Eve. | |
| The BBC1 sitcom Mrs Brown's Boys was the most popular show of Christmas Eve, watched by 8.8 million viewers, just ahead of ITV1's Coronation Street, with 8.6 million. | |
| BBC2 played the nostalgia card over the Christmas period, with repeats of Open All Hours and Porridge, both starring Ronnie Barker, each watched by more than 3 million viewers on Christmas Eve. | |
| Channel 5 went for the weird – rather than the festive – with World's Biggest Pets its most watched programme on Christmas Eve with 1.5 million viewers. | |
| The BBC1 controller Danny Cohen said: "It's been brilliant to see so many viewers watching BBC1 on Christmas Day. | |
| "Audiences tuned in for unmissable special episodes of their favourite shows – with EastEnders topping the table as the most popular show of the day, peaking at 9.8 million viewers. We have many more television treats for viewers to enjoy on BBC1 over the rest of the festive season." | |
| BBC1 had a 31.7% share of peaktime viewing between 6pm and 10.30pm on Christmas Day, against ITV1's 26.9% (including ITV1+1). | |
| Channel 4, whose top rating Christmas Day offering was another showing for Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, with 2.2 million, had a 7.9% share, ahead of BBC2's 4.7% and Channel 5's 2.1%. | |
| The Christmas Day top 10 | The Christmas Day top 10 |
| 1. EastEnders, BBC1, 8.45pm-9.45pm, 9.37 million (34.3%) | |
| 2. Coronation Street, ITV1, 7.30pm-8.30pm, 8.83 million (34.5%) | |
| 3. Strictly Come Dancing, BBC1, 6.15pm-7.30pm, 7.76 million (33.3%) | |
| 4. The Royle Family, BBC1, 9.45pm-10.45pm, 7.68 million (30.1%) | |
| 5. Doctor Who, BBC1, 5.15pm-6.15pm, 7.59 million (33.9%) | |
| 6. Downton Abbey, ITV1, 8.45pm-10.45pm, 7.32 million (27.7%) | |
| 7. Call the Midwife, BBC1, 7.30pm-8.45pm, 7.26 million (28.3%) | |
| 8. The Queen, BBC1, 3pm-3.10pm, 6.27 million (36.7%) | |
| 9. Emmerdale, ITV1, 7pm-7.30pm, 6.23 million (25.7%) | |
| 10. BBC News, BBC1, 10.45pm-11pm, 6.1 million (30.3%) | |
| • ITV1 figures include audience for the timeshifted channel ITV1+1 |