[Red Moon]

Dragons' Den snares 3.4m

The new series of BBC2's Dragons' Den got off to a flying start last night at 9pm with an audience of 3.4m (14.7%), the show's fourth largest ever audience.

The hour-long business-reality show, fronted by Evan Davies, saw its audience grow substantially from an initial 2.9m (12.7%) to 4m (16.7%) in the final 15-minutes.

Since the show began in 2006, only three other editions of the show have gained more viewers. Two editions in 2007 gained over 3.5m each while the episode on 21 September 2006 drew 3.8m (17.9%).

The previous series, which started in October last year, kicked off with 3.1m (12.6%) in a similar slot, also on a Monday. The entire eight-part run averaged 3m (12.3%) with the highest audience topping 3.4m (13.9%) on 10 December.

Last night's show also proved to be a strong attraction for both upmarket and younger viewers.

ABC1 viewers made up 54% of the show's audience. This though is slightly down on last year's show which maintained a 56.9% share of ABC1 viewers across its run.

Viewers aged between 16 and 34 accounted for 31% of the show's audience, up slightly from last year's average of 30.5%.

At the time Dragons' Den was on air, BBC2 narrowly pushed ITV1 into third place. BBC2 claimed second place by a margin of just 51,000 viewers.

BBC2's audience averaged 3.422m compared with 3.371m for Police Camera Action! on the commercial network at the same time. ITV1's share for the show was 14.5%.

No one could touch BBC1's New Tricks which once again cruised to a comfortable victory.

The third in the series of the BBC1 drama picked up 8m (34.2%) more than both ITV1 and BBC2 combined at the time. The drama, while still a huge draw for viewers, has dropped 700,000 viewers since the current run started on 7 July.

Further down the field at 9pm was Channel 4's documentary trilogy Can't Read, Can't Write with 1.5m (6.2%) over the hour. The show picked up an extra 251,000 on C4+1.

Bringing up the rear was Five's Banged Up on just 782,000 (3.4%), a drop of just over 100,000 compared to last week.

C4 was a much more popular attraction at 10pm with the latest goings on in C4's Big Brother picking up 2.8m (15.6%). The show gained 267,000 on the channel's timeshifted option C4+1.

BBC2's airing of Would I Lie to You?, which had previously been shown on BBC1, entertained 1.7m (8.4%). Five's CCTV Cities had 807,000 (4.5%).

ITV1's News at Ten informed 1.9m (9.5%) while BBC1's 10 O'Clock News secured 5.5m (34.2%).

BBC2's new daytime cookery show Eating with the Enemy got off to a tentative start at 4.30pm. The 45-minute show, where amateur chefs cook for a panel of professionals, averaged 1m (11.9%). So far the channel has averaged 1.3m (1.9%) at that time.

All hours shares for Tuesday 15 July 2008: BBC1 – 22.5%, ITV1 – 19.5%, C4 – 7.6% (C4+1 – 0.8%), BBC2 – 8.1%, Five – 4.3%, multichannel – 37.3%.

Peaktime (6pm to 10.30pm) shares: BBC1 – 26%, ITV1 – 23.7% C4 – 6.9% (C4+1 – 0.6%), BBC2 – 9.9%, Five – 3.6%, multichannel – 29.2 %.

Source: Boardcast

[SamR]

no better than BB but you dont hear the papers saying "Oh its dead!"