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9.7m..(48%)..Coronation Street
7.1m..(40%)..Emmerdale
6.2m..(27%)..The British Soap Awards
6.2m..(26%)..Big Brother: Live Launch
4.8m..(19%)..The Apprentice

The eighth series of Channel 4's reality show launched with 6.2 million viewers, a share of 26%.

The 75-minute show, produced by Brighter Pictures, saw its audience rise over the time it was on air. It started with 5.3m (22.8%) and hit 5.7m (23.2%) at 9.45pm. The show's audience then took a dramatic leap at 10pm and ended with 8m (35%) in the final 15 minutes.

The audience for Big Brother was, unsurprisingly, well above the 3.6m (15.7%) that is the channel's slot average for the year so far.

This year's launch show was down by 800,000 viewers compared to the start of the seventh series when 7m (30.6%) watched on Thursday 18 May 2006. The sixth series opened with 5.9m (30%).

Last night's show was, once again, a big hit with a young, upmarket audience. Of those people that watched the show 44.2% were from the ABC1 demographic while 41.4% were aged between 16 and 34. 59% of the audience were female.

Big Brother was largely responsible for C4 securing a peaktime (6pm to 10.30pm) share of 15%, its third highest this year. So far in 2007 the broadcaster has managed a peaktime share of 8.7%. On the two previous occasions that the broadcaster secured a higher share it was airing Celebrity Big Brother.

In the five minutes before the show started, when C4 issued its apology over showing contentious footage from Celebrity Big Brother earlier in the year, 3.1m (13%) were watching.

The launch of the reality show propelled C4 to a position in the ratings race where it was on an equal footing with ITV1. The two-hour coverage of The British Soap Awards, which began at 8pm, averaged 6.2m (26.5%).

The awards ceremony began with an audience of 6.9m (33.1%) but this then dipped to 6.4m (29.7%) at 8.15pm before rallying at 8.45pm with 6.9m (29.7%). The size of the audience fluctuated quite considerably throughout culminating in the programme ending on 5.5m (22.4%). The average audience of 6.2m was well above the channel's slot average for 2007 so far of 5.2m (22.4%).

Par score

The programme's audience was on a par with last year's event coverage. In 2006 The British Soap Awards gained 6.2m (27.5%) on 24 May in a similar slot.

The two-pronged attack from ITV1 and C4 pushed BBC1's The Apprentice into third place at the time. The reality show picked up an average audience of 4.8m (19.4%) for an hour from 9pm. Despite the strong competition the show gained an extra 100,000 viewers from the previous week.

Whilst the show was on air its audience grew from 4.1m (17.3%) to 5m (20.5%).

During the hour (9pm to 10pm) that the three shows went head-to-head BBC1 averaged 4.8m (19.4%), ITV1 managed 5.6m (23.1%) and C4 had 5.6m (23.2%).

Demographic Breakdown

1.50m - Women 16-34
1.07m - Men 16-34
2.57m - Adults 16-34