I have researched viewing figures on BARB, first I researched viewing figures for the

week ending the 26th of September 2010 with the top 10 most popular programmes. For
BBC 1 it shows that Eastenders is the most popular taking the top 4 places, Eastenders
does not air on Wednesday but if it did that is a strong possibility that it would take the
top 5 places. Eastenders has been around since 1985 so it has years to build its audience
and viewers. Also the wide range of characters from London attracts all different types
of people.
Mondays episode reached 10, 215 000 viewer ratings and Friday has the lowest number
of viewers out of all of the 4 days it is aired, this shows that Friday is a less popular day
for people to watch soaps, this could be due to people going out and socializing.

On ITV 1 the top 10 included 2 soaps. Although Coronation St is not the most popular
on ITV1 its figures are very similar to that of Eastenders. However, Friday’s viewing
figures are also much lower than the Monday episode figures. Coronation St is the
longest running soap and has therefore had years to build its audience also.
Emmerdale on the other hand has smaller viewing figures but it still reaches the top 10.
This shows that despite the soap being set in the countryside with a smaller target
audience to aim at, it is still extremely popular.
On the other hand, Hollyoaks on Channel 4 is not as popular as the other
soaps. Hollyoaks only just scraped the top 30 with Monday’s episode reaching
25th place. Once again Monday’s episode has reached the most viewings over
the other days. Channel 4 has not been running for as long as BB1 and ITV1
so that may have caused the drop in ratings and also Hollyoaks has only been
running since 1995 so therefore has not had as many years to pick up a large
audience.