TAM Ireland/Nielsen have officially released Ireland’s top 20 most-watched programmes in 2017, which sees 14 of the top 20 events being dominated by national news or sporting events.
Six entertainment programmes were included in this year’s top 20 with two slots going to ‘The Late Late Show’ and ‘Mrs. Brown’s Boys’, while ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and ‘Room to Improve’ also garnered mentions.
‘The Late Late Toy Show’ was once again the highest-rating television programme of the year, with an average audience of 1.35m and a 70 per cent share of the available audience. RTÉ Sport continued to dominate the most-watched list accounting for 11 of the top 20 programmes of the year. The next highest watched programmes - all airing on RTÉ2 - were the All-Ireland Football final on RTÉ2, featuring Dublin versus Mayo in September; the Euro qualifier play-off against Denmark; the All-Ireland Hurling final featuring Galway v Waterford; and the Wales v Ireland World Cup qualifier. RTÉ2’s coverage of three fixtures in the RBS 6 Nations also occupied Top 10 spots.
During Storm Ophelia in October, Irish viewers turned to RTÉ News from the time the Status Red warning was given ahead of the Nine O’Clock News on Sunday 15 October making it the sixth most watched programme of the year and most watched news bulletin of 2017 with 846,000 viewers. Large audiences continued to watch the extensive coverage from reporters across the country and live updates from Met Éireann throughout the next day with extended One O’Clock and Six One News programmes on October 16th.
‘Mrs. Brown’s Boys’ was the only other entertainment programme to reach the top 10, excluding ‘The Late Late Toy Show’. Episodes ‘CSI: Mammy’ and ‘Mammy’s Mummy’ occupying the 10th and 11th spot on the top 20 listing, and earned 753,200 and 731,700, respectively. Other entertainment programmes such as ShinAwil’s ‘Dancing with the Stars’ format proved very popular with 663,900 viewers tuning in for the first elimination.
However, the most impressive viewership of all must be original series and Sunday night favourite, Dermot Bannon’s ‘Room to Improve’. The show, which is in its 10th season, recorded an audience of 703,000 viewers. Being an original format and production, ‘Room to Improve’ earned a higher rating than flagship RTÉ shows ‘The Late Late Show Country Music Special’ (690,400) and ‘Dancing with the Stars’ (663,900).
The official TAM Ireland/Nielsen figures for 2017 also show that TV viewing continues to dominate our leisure time with the average Irish adult watching 3 hours and 13 minutes of TV daily and 89 per cent of that is watched live.
Data released by TAM Ireland/ Nielsen. Based on all channels available in Ireland. Only the highest rating episode of a series is included.