Sky News and the BBC News channel both had a huge audience boost on Friday as viewers tuned in to see the bloody climax to the sieges in which the suspects in the Charlie Hebdo attack were killed.
Both the 24-news channels and the main TV news bulletins saw big spikes in their audiences during the crisis that began with the Charlie Hebdo shootings last Wednesday.
Sky News showed the biggest single increase with its 4.30pm bulletin on Friday watched by 713,000 viewers, a 5.7% share of the TV audience at that time, up 918% on its three-month slot average.
BBC News had the biggest audience of any news channel bulletin with 932,000 viewers at 4pm, up 696% on average.
Unusually, seven of the top 10 multichannel programmes and 13 of the top 20 shows outside of the five main channels were news programmes on Friday.
Overall, the BBC News channel had a 3.8% share of the audience across the whole of Friday, more than three times its three-month average of 1.1% and the most watched TV channel outside of the five main terrestrial networks.
Sky News had a 2.5% share, up from a three-month average of 0.7%.
Both channels had a bigger share of the audience than E4 (1.9%), ITV3 (1.8%) and ITV2, which had a 1.6% share.
The 6pm news bulletin on BBC1 on Friday was watched by 6.5 million viewers (33.7%), nearly 50% up on its 2014 average of 4.6 million. It was its biggest audience of the week, up from the 6 million viewers who tuned in on the day of the Hebdo attack.
BBC1’s 10pm bulletin had 5 million viewers (25%), up from its year-to-date average of 4.2 million. The 10pm programme’s biggest audience last week was on Thursday, with 5.7 million viewers (29.3%).
BBC1’s late bulletin had around three times the audience of ITV’s News at Ten, which had 1.8 million viewers on Thursday and 2.2 million viewers on Friday.
The ITV bulletin’s biggest audience was the 2.6 million (14.6%) who watched on Monday, boosted by the return of David Tennant and Olivia Colman drama Broadchurch.
Sunday’s rally in Paris to commemorate and celebrate the victims of last week’s terror attacks also boosted viewing of news bulletins.
BBC1’s 5.30pm Sunday news bulletin averaged 4.5 million viewers and a 22.4% share (compared to 3.6 million and 20.5% the previous Sunday), while the 10pm programme had 5.7 million and 29.4% (5.6 millon/27.5%).
