Daily Mail claims viewers have ‘deserted’ Downton Abbey

The Daily Mail’s claims that 400,000 viewers have ‘deserted’ Downton Abbey, over of the number of ad-breaks,  aren’t entirely accurate.

In today’s edition of the Daily Mail the paper carries an article with the headline ‘400,000 desert Downton Abbey over excessive ad breaks and trails for other programmes‘. The article accompanying the headline states that over 400,000 viewers have deserted Downton Abbey because on Sunday evening 8.7 million viewers tuned in at 9pm on ITV1 whereas the second series launched two weeks ago with 9 million viewers.

However, what the Daily Mail doesn’t mention is that while 8.7 million viewers tuned in at 9pm a further 350,000 viewers watched via the ITV1 time-shift channel. Add those two figures together and the third episode was actually seen by just over 9 million viewers. That figure doesn’t even count those who will have caught up with the episode via the ITV Player service. So viewers are not deserting Downton Abbey at all.

The paper is correct in saying though that viewers are not happy with the number of ad-breaks within episodes of the Julian Fellowes penned drama. ITV has defended itself over viewer complaints about the number of ad-breaks and their duration pointing out that commercials fund programmes such as Downton Abbey.

UPDATED: Digital Spy are now running a similar story to the Daily Mail about the supposed ratings declineof Downton Abbey. The Digital Spy story also neglects to mention the additional 350k viewers who watched Sunday night’s episode via the ITV1 time-shift channel.