Fair City won the battle of the festive soaps with an average of 423,700 viewers tuning in on Christmas night on RTÉ One with a share of 27% of the available audience as a shocking occurrence at the Brennan’s brought Christmas celebrations to an abrupt end.
RTÉ One and RTÉ2 were the number one and number two channels on Christmas Day with RTÉ’s all day share up 23% year-on-year. Between them RTÉ One and RTÉ2 accounted for 9 of the Top 10 most watched programmes on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and St. Stephen’s Day.
On Christmas Eve, Daniel O’Donnell’s RTÉ One festive special – Christmas With Daniel – proved to be very popular viewing, drawing an average audience of 342,600 with a 25.34% share.
On RTÉ2, the Father Ted Christmas Special proved as big a draw as ever on Christmas Eve bringing in an average audience of 229,600 with a share of 17%. Also on RTÉ2 on Christmas Eve the Bridget & Eamon Christmas Special attracted an average of 185,100 viewers and a share of 13.6% with a share among 15 to 34-year-olds of 23.2%. The second showing of the Bridget & Eamon Christmas Special on St. Stephen’s Day attracted an average of 94,400 viewers.
Christmas movies were as hugely popular as ever with The Flag starring Pat Shortt on RTÉ One on Christmas night pulling an average of 334,400 viewers and a share of 27% while Anna, Elsa, Olaf and co’s Frozen adventure also on RTÉ One attracted an average of 333,900 viewers and a share of 23%.
The top movie on RTÉ2 was Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone which drew an average audience of 186,500 and a share of 23.47% on Christmas Day while the St. Stephen’s Day showing of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey had an average of 149,100 and a share of 10%.
The most watched news broadcast over the bank holiday weekend was the St Stephen’s Day Nine O’Clock News on RTÉ One with an average audience of 474,500 and an audience share of 32.21%.
Further information: Fergus McCormack, 086 8674751, fergus.mccormack@rte.ie
Note to Editor:
Source for television figures: TAM Ireland Ltd/ Nielsen TAM, Live + VOSDAL data, National Individuals
*Average audience – The average number of viewers across a programme or series, expressed in 000s. TV viewing is measured minute-by-minute, so the average audience is the average across all of these minutes
**Share – The percentage of the total audience watching television at the time