If ITV‘s viewing figures are anything to go by, then most of us are getting the message and staying home amid the coronavirus outbreak.
ITV’s viewing surge
ITV Lunchtime News had its biggest audience since New Year’s Day 2014, doubling its ratings year on year, while more than four million tuned into the ITV Evening Regional News, demonstrating the countrywide appetite for trusted news at both national and regional level.
There were sharp rises of up to almost 20% for ITV Evening National News and ITV News at Ten.
Peston had its biggest ever audience on a Wednesday night with 1m viewers and a 13% share.
Daytime boost
ITV Daytime reached a six year high with its biggest audience since Christmas Day 2013, including This Morning drawing its biggest audience for two years while Loose Women’s ratings were the highest since 2014.
Good Morning Britain was watched by its seventh biggest audience ever.
More young people are also tuning in to ITV’s News and Daytime programmes with viewing among 16-34s so far this week in daytime (Monday-Wednesday 06:00-17:59) rising by more than a quarter [26%] compared with the year to date average.
Young viewers
16-34 viewing to the ITV Lunchtime news has more than doubled, growing by +160% versus the year-to-date average for Monday to Wednesday bulletins, while the News at Ten is up by a third [33%].
ITV Daytime’s live programmes are proving a particular draw for young people with This Morning almost doubling its share and Loose Women more than doubling among that demographic. GMB is up by +34%; Lorraine is up by +37%; This Morning +93%; Loose Women +139%.
Yesterday’s figures follow on from other ratings peaks already this week across News and Daytime.
On Tuesday, Good Morning Britain (06:00-08:59) had its fourth biggest audience ever with an average audience of 984k viewers and a 23% share.
Only the mornings after the EU Referendum and the 2017 and 2019 General Elections had bigger audiences (with extended coverage on these days).
Full details on ITV ratings for Wednesday 18 March:
ITV Daytime (06:00-17:59) averaged 1.5m viewers and 20% share which was its strongest viewing performance for a Wednesday since Christmas Day 2013.
Viewing in daytime was up year-on-year by +32%.
Good Morning Britain (06:00-08:59) drew its seventh biggest audience ever with an average audience of 906k, up year-on-year by 15%.
Viewing to Lorraine (09:00-09:59); This Morning (10:00-12:29) and Loose Women (12:30-13:29) were all up year-on-year by +23%, +70% and +76% respectively.
With 1.5m viewers, it was This Morning’s biggest audience since the Beast from the East in March 2018 (excluding the extended Royal Wedding special in October of that year).
With 1.3m viewers, Loose Women had its biggest audience since October 2014.
ITV News performed strongly across the day.
The ITV Lunchtime News (13:30-13:54) had its biggest audience since New Year’s Day 2014 with 1.6m viewers.
This was more than double the amount of viewing to the equivalent bulletin last year. With 4.2m viewers, the ITV Evening Regional News (18:00-18:29) was up year-on-year by +0.7m (+19%), whilst the ITV Evening National News (18:30-18:59) was up by +0.6m (+17%) with an average audience of 3.9m.
With 2.4m viewers, the ITV News at Ten (22:00-22:29) was up on the Wednesday year-to-date average by +0.4m (+19%).