Paralympics: 3.6 million peak audience for athletics

Viewing levels to Channel 4's coverage of the London 2012 Paralympic Games continued to increase as Friday's coverage registered a peak viewing figure of 3.6 million - or 3.8 million including viewers to the Paralympics Extra streams - during coverage of the athletics from the Olympics stadium at 9.00pm.  This is an increase from the 3.3 million who watched Channel 4 for Thursday night's wheelchair basketball.

The peak figure of 3.6 million was greater than the equivalent peak audience on any other channel at the time - with BBC ONE peaking at 2.9 million and ITV1 peaking with 2.6 million over the same 5 minute period.  Over the 15 minute period from 10.00pm to 10.15pm, Channel 4 continued to be the most watched channel with coverage of the Paralympics - with an average of 3.0 million to BBC ONE's 2.9 million and ITV1's 2.5 million.

Other viewing data includes:

• Paralympics Games 2012 Tonight coverage, which was extended later in the evening to show the GB v Canada wheelchair basketball as well as an interview with gold medallist Hannah Cockroft, averaged 2.2 million / 11 percent share - peaking with 3.6 million during the track and field coverage at 9.00pm
• Early evening coverage from 5.25pm to 6.30pm averaged 1.6 million / 10 percent share - peaking with 1.8 million viewers at 6.05pm.
• Afternoon coverage averaged 1.0 million / 13 percent share - peaking with 1.8 million at 5.10pm
• Through the day coverage of the Paralympic Games helped Channel 4 average 9.8 percent share across the day - up by +52% against the previous 12 month average. Including the three Paralympic Extra streams, Channel 4 average 10.8 percent share across the day.

By comparison, on day 3 at the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing BBC Two's one hour of coverage averaged 1.8 million / 9 percent share from 7pm - peaking at 2.4 million.