ITV1's News at Ten drew its highest audience since its reintroduction with 4.3m (20.6%) at 10pm last night.

The 35-minute news bulletin, presented by Trevor McDonald, managed to appeal to 4.7m (21.2%) in the opening 15 minutes.

The programme was comfortably above the channel's weekday slot average for last year of 3.3m (16.5%).

Last night's bulletin was the most watched edition of ITV1's nightly news since it reverted to its old 10pm slot on 14 January.

The previous highest edition was on 17 January with 4.2m (20.8%), the only other time the News at Ten has reached the 4m mark.

So far this year, ITV1's News at Ten has averaged 2.6m (13.1%) with the lowest audience reaching just 1.9m (9.4%) on 12 February.

The ITN-produced bulletin was helped, in part, by the delay in the Ten O'Clock News as BBC1's live FA Cup football coverage over-ran.

Coverage of Middlesbrough's replay against Sheffield United for a place in the quarter finals began at 8pm and due to the game going into extra time finished at 10.35pm. The entire programme averaged 4.6m (19.6%). The game hit a high of 5.6m (25.2%) at 10pm.

BBC1's nightly news afterwards had 3.6m (24.0%).

BBC2's Masterchef was back on form after Tuesday's dip with the hour-long show pulling in 4.1m (16.8%), up by 1.7m on the slot average of 2.4m (10.8%). BBC2 continued strongly at 9pm with Torchwood on 3m (12.5%).

Grabbing the spoils at 8pm though was ITV1's The Bill on 5.2m (21.1%). An almost identically sized audience - 5.2m (21.4%) - watched Taggart at 9pm.

It was another ‘Super Wednesday' peaktime performance from Channel 4 with its line up of property and food shows.

Relocation, Relocation grabbed 2.9m (11.9%) at 8pm which was followed by Grand Designs Revisited an hour later on 3.5m (14.4%). Also breaking the 3m mark at 10pm was Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA on 3.1m (16.6%).

All three shows, respectively, picked up an audience of 100,000 when they aired on C4+1.

Five's Ice Road Truckers continued to be a popular attraction at 8pm with a solid 1.9m (7.6%), way over the channel's slot average of 746,000 (33%). The following Extraordinary People: Hope for Hayley at 9pm had 1.6m (6.7%).

All hours shares for Wednesday 27 February 2008: ITV1 - 21.7%, BBC1 - 21%, C4 - 10.2%, BBC2 - 8.2%, Five - 5.4%, multichannel - 33%.

Peaktime (6pm to 10.30pm) shares: ITV1 - 25.5%, BBC1 - 20.7%, C4 - 11%, BBC2 - 10%, Five - 5.1%, multichannel - 27.1%.

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