Britannia fails to get High (ratings)

ITV1's Britannia High

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ITV1's cross between High School Musical and Fame, Britannia High, got off to a shaky start with 3.3m viewers (14.4% share) yesterday at 6.15pm.

The opening 60-minute edition of Britannia High held a largely steady audience. but was down by almost 30% on the channel's slot average for the year of 4.7m (24%).

The show is pitched at the youth market and 22.2% of its audience were 16-34-year-olds. This compares to 18.9% for the slot this year. ABC1 viewers accounted for 30.4% of the show's audience.

Britannia High faced an uphill struggle as it was in direct competition from BBC1's popular Antiques Roadshow, which added on 800,000 viewers to average 8.8m (38.2%) at the same time.

The show grew its audience from an initial 7.3m (32.9%) to 10.4m (44.2%). It was the show's highest audience since 18 January 2004.

The corporation kept ahead of its commercial rival at 7.15pm when the results show of Strictly Come Dancing pulled in a sizeable 9.7m (38.3%), a week-on-week increase of 700,000.

Holding steady from last week was ITV1's Heartbeat on 5.6m (22%) at 7.15pm .

Little Dorrit

BBC1's big autumn drama Little Dorrit made a positive start at 8pm with the opening hour-long show pulling in 6.3m (24%). The adaptation of Charles Dickens's novel was above the slot average of 5.9m (23.5%).

The show was a big draw for upmarket viewers with 52.7% of the audience coming from the ABC1 demographic. Younger viewers weren't impressed though as just 12.6% of the audience were aged between 16 and 34.

The drama lost out though to the concluding story of A Touch of Frost with 7.4m (29.2%) for two hours.

Losing half a million viewers from last week was BBC1's Stephen Fry in America with last night's show bringing in 5.1m (20.1%).

Dragons' Den

With BBC1 and ITV1 mopping up the majority of viewers, the remaining terrestrials had a tough time. 

BBC2 managed a reasonable showing with its new spin-off from Dragons' Den. The 60-minute Dragons' Den: Outside the Den with 2.4m (6.7%) at 8pm.

Channel 4 devoted most of its peaktime line-up to films with Monster-in-Law at 8.05pm with 1.3m (5.1%) which was followed by Saw II at 10pm with 1.2m (9.4%).

Five followed a similar policy with the movie Alive at 7pm with just 800,000 (3.1%). Layer Cake, starring Daniel Craig, gained 1.5m (7.2%).