Digital Focus: Hollyoaks

E4's Hollyoaks

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There's nothing like an explosive storyline to boost a soap's ratings.

Last week, Hollyoaks producer Bryan Kirkwood announced his departure from the soap with a sensational storyline. He joined a tradition of producing explosive storylines from the old Brookside production offices, where Phil Redmond masterminded the great Emmerdale plane crash storyline before he came up with Hollyoaks, initially as a lighter antidote to sensational storylines.

This week Hollyoaks claimed the top four digital positions with 1.5 million/8% share for Thursday night's big hostage storyline at 7pm on E4. The digital channel's share jumped to 1.4% from 1.2% last week. In primetime, E4's total share (including E4 +1) was up to 2.5% from last week's 1.9%. With 16 to 24 year olds it had a 7.4% weekly share - on Thursday night at 7pm this shot up to an astonishing 28% share with this age group in multichannel homes.

These figures somewhat eclipsed the improvement in Katie and Peter: the Next Chapter on ITV2 that same evening at 9pm - increasing to 1.1 million/5.5% share from last week's 870,000/4% share. However, the days when we scanned multichannel for the performance of the younger-skewing channels have ended - the rise of the grey digital viewer is confirmed with continuing strong figures for BBC4's steam-powered programming.

So, on at the same time as Katie and Peter was BBC4's best performer of the week, The Last Days of Steam at 9pm with 720,000/4% share. This gave BBC4 a 7% share with the over 55 year olds. BBC4's primetime multichannel share on Thursday with this age group was over 5% as they also lapped up Absolutely Chuffed: The Men who Built a Steam Engine at 8pm with 610,000/3% share.

Less exciting news for Sky One, which had the feature length finale of Hairspray - the School Musical on Sunday at 6pm concluding with 400,000/2% share. Meanwhile, on the same evening, E4's Desperate Housewives concluded a series with a jump into the future at 9pm and started the next series at 10pm. The new series had 524,000/3% share. Perhaps they should have opted for something more explosive.
Philip Reevell can be contacted atphilip.reevell@citybroadcasting.co.uk