UK TV Charts - w/e 8th March 2009

With apologies (again!) for the delay, here's rundown of the Top 20 most popular UK TV programmes or series for the week ending Sunday 8th March 2009 collated from information compiled and presented by BARB. Note that figures for multi-episode TV broadcasts (ie soaps or other shows with more than one episode per week) are rounded up into an average figure for the series and are denoted in the chart by * News broadcasts are excluded from the figures.

1) Coronation Street (ITV1)......................10.04 *
2) Dancing On Ice (ITV1)..........................9.33 *
3) EastEnders (BBC1)..............................8.57 *
4) Wild At Heart (ITV1)...........................8.52
5) Let's Dance For Comic Relief (BBC1)............8.44
6) Emmerdale (ITV1)...............................7.37 *
7) Casualty (BBC1)................................7.05
8) Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway (ITV1)...7.00
9) Lark Rise To Candleford (BBC1).................6.78
10) Antiques Roadshow (BBC1).......................6.73
11) National Lottery Saturday Draws (BBC1).........6.48
12) Law and Order:UK (ITV1)........................6.24
13) Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC1)...............5.99
14) Harry Hill's TV Burp (ITV1)....................5.97
15) Holby City (BBC1)..............................5.93
16) P**rs M*rg*n's Life Stories (ITV1).............5.74
17) Rogue Traders (BBC1)...........................5.32
18) Creature Comforts (ITV1).......................5.06
19) The Bill (ITV1)................................5.00 *
20) Watchdog (BBC1)................................4.94

Chart commentary: Another week, another chart - and nothinbg much to write hoime about. The Top ten remains static with its soap sandwich with a bit of celebrity dancing/skating to break up/increase the monotony. Fortunately 5 of this week's top ten shows are just about to reach the end of their runs so it'll be ncie to see a few new titles in the chart in the next couple of weeks. Distressing to see the odious P**rs "My chat show's more popular than Jonathan Ross's" M*rg*n's Sunday night car crash still doing well - although I suspoect that's more due to the very ITV list of celebs M*rg*n choses to grill - I mean, come on: Ulrika, Sharon Osbourne, Jordan...pretty much aiming squarely at ITV's key demographic there, a handful of names who are at the core of ITV's reputation problems at the moment. Elsewhere Law and Order:Uk holds up weel in week two - its figures are pretty steady now at the 6 million plus mark so future series must be assured. The drawing of a few Lottery numbers continues to appeal on a Saturday night (I won a tenner last night!) and BBC stalwarts Watchdog and Rogue Traders slip under the radar to grab a couple of slots towards the end of the chart - showing, if nothing else, that the British viewing public likes to see its fellow punters in distress.