Depending on who you ask, you will get different answers to this question. Some will tell you TV viewing is buoyant and very healthy, others will tell you TV viewing is stable, i.e. flat, and some will tell you that TV is in severe decline.

I did a simple exercise. I went to BARB and looked at the total viewing for the top 10 viewing events - i.e. individual programmes on their best rating day for the years 1981, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2006. As an additional indicator, I looked at the best audience achieved by Coronation Street in each of those years. Here’s what I found:

In 1981, the sum total of the top 10 viewing events was 213.8m. By 1990 the sum of the top 10 had fallen to 176.2m and by 2000 it had fallen again to 150.5m. Then in 2005, things got….. well, much worse. In 2005 the sum of the top 10 programmes was 116.7m. That’s just over half of what it was in 1981. In 2006, the sum of the top 10 audience climbed back to 139.9m. But that was the World Cup year. Out of the 10 top rating programmes, six were World Cup games and of those six, five were England games. Now this isn’t a scientific study of TV viewing and it does have a major flaw; it does not account for the fact that viewing is now dispersed across a greater number of channels than it was in 1981, or indeed 1990. In 2006 there are hundreds of channels whereas in 1981, there were less than a handful.

As another indicator, I looked at viewing trends of Coronation Street between 1981 and 2006. In 1981, the Street’s best audience figure was 18.8m. This actually grew to 21.4m in 1985, by 1990 it was 19.2m and in 1995, it was steady at 19.4m. Then in 2000, well….. things took a turn for the worse; the top Coronation Street airing fell to 18.9m. This downhill trend has continued ever since with 14.3m tuning in in 2005 and then another fall to 12.6m in 2006. That last figure is the greatest cause for worry amongst TV executives - it’s a 12% decline in just one year. But then again, it was that World Cup year.

By these two like for like measures over the past 25 years, the story is one of undeniable decline. And were it not for the World Cup in 2006, things would probably have looked much, much worse. Whilst the explosion of channels may mean that this is not a true reflection of overall viewing figures, it certainly shows one thing - the viewing of BBC and ITV, this country’s major TV content producers is hugely down over the 25 year period.