Bake Off boosts Channel 4's Christmas Day ratings
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Mark Bourdillon/Charlotte Medlicott
The Great Christmas Bake Off helped Channel 4 reach its highest Christmas Day ratings for more than 15 years.
The Christmas edition attracted an average audience of 4.8 million people.
Channel 4 said it had its biggest Christmas Day audience in terms of both volume and share since modern TV measurement records began in 2002.
But Bake Off was still some way behind the top festive shows. BBC One's Call The Midwife topped the Christmas Day ratings with 9.6 million viewers.
The Queen's Christmas message was ahead in the overnight ratings, which came out on Boxing Day, with 7.6 million across BBC One, ITV and Sky News.
But Call The Midwife and other shows overtook it when seven-day catch-up viewing was taken into account.
| Top Christmas Day 2017 TV shows | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Programme | Channel | Audience |
| 1. | Call The Midwife (pictured) | BBC One | 9.6m |
| 2. | Mrs Brown's Boys | BBC One | 9m |
| 3. | Strictly Come Dancing | BBC One | 8.3m |
| 4. | EastEnders | BBC One | 8.1m |
| 5. | Doctor Who | BBC One | 7.9m |
Source: PA
BBC One broadcast seven out of the top 10 shows on Christmas Day. Coronation Street was ITV's most popular show, in sixth place, with seven million viewers.
Victoria and Emmerdale also made the top 10, with 5.4 million and 5.1 million respectively.
Despite performing so well for Channel 4, The Great Christmas Bake Off narrowly missed out on the overall top 10.
And the Bake Off Christmas Day special couldn't match the audiences for its most recent full series - the first since it moved from the BBC to Channel 4 - which averaged nine million viewers.
This was the second year in a row that Call The Midwife had topped the consolidated Christmas Day ratings.
The 2017 total of 9.6 million was 400,000 up on the previous year's figure.
However, Christmas ratings are much lower than they were decades ago, before multi-channel TV became prevalent and before the advent of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon.
| Top Christmas Day TV of the last 35 years | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Programme | Date | Channel | Audience |
| 1. | EastEnders | 25 & 28 December 1986 (aggregated) | BBC One | 30.15m |
| 2. | Coronation Street | 25 & 27 December 1987 (aggregated) | ITV | 26.65m |
| 3. | Crocodile Dundee | 25 December 1989 | BBC One | 21.77m |
| 4. | Only Fools & Horses | 25 December 2001 | BBC One | 21.35m |
| 5. | Just Good Friends | 25 December 1986 | BBC One | 20.75m |
| 6. | Only Fools & Horses | 25 December 1992 | BBC One | 20.14m |
| 7. | Only Fools & Horses | 25 December 1989 | BBC One | 20.12m |
| 8. | Only Fools & Horses | 25 December 1993 | BBC One | 19.59m |
| 9. | Birds Of A Feather | 25 December 1993 | BBC One | 19.39m |
| 10. | Raiders of the Lost Ark | 25 December 1984 | ITV | 19.35m |
Source: Barb
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