The sinking Beeb

Picked up from USS Neverdock is a story from the Media Guardian which records that the ratings for the BBC 1 television channel have slumped to what is believed to be its lowest ever daily audience share on Sunday - at the end of its worst ever month.

The network's audience share for the four weeks to Sunday fell to 21.5 percent while, last Sunday it plummeted a 16.8 percent audience share. This continued a lousy run of Sunday ratings this summer for BBC1, which is now thought to have recorded its four worst-ever daily audience share figures - all on a Sunday. BBC1's two previous monthly lows were in June, with a 22.6 percent audience share, and July, with a 22.7 percent share.

Meanwhile, England Expects has noted an interesting development. The massive German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG has completed the purchase of Channel 5 the UK terrestrial broadcaster through its Luxembougish subsidiary RTL "which has founded its growth on its wholeheartedly European approach".

Says England Expects, this is the first time that such a broadcaster has been owned by a non UK firm. That is in itself no bad thing of course, but it has to be watched. Bertlesmann is a well known corporate cheerleader for the project and it will be instructive to gauge the European coverage on Channel 5 from now on.

The one thing for sure, however, is that it would struggle to be quite as bad as the BBC.

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