And it’s goodbye from millions of festive viewers

Ratings for Christmas Day TV shows have plummeted since 1980s

Christmas Day was once the biggest date in the television calendar, with over 20 million people tuning in to see the latest blockbuster film or comedy special.

But programmes this year will be lucky to get audiences of half that size, as new analysis reveals just how festive TV has fallen out of fashion.

Ratings for the most-watched show on Christmas Day have dropped by nearly a quarter this decade and just over a third since 2000. The decline is even steeper when comparing 2017 with 1997 (down 41%) and 1987 (down 50%).

Last year’s most-watched programme on Christmas Day was Call The Midwife on BBC1, which had an audience of 9.6 million.

By contrast, 21.8 million saw the TV premiere of Crocodile Dundee in 1989 and 21.3 million tuned in for Only Fools And Horses on Christmas Day in 2001.

Figures compiled using data from Barb, which publishes ratings on behalf of the TV industry show that the average Christmas Day audience remained steady through the 1980s and much of the 1990s, before starting a downward trend around the turn of the century.

Soap operas have seen a particularly steep decline. Coronation Street enjoyed 14.6 million viewers for its Christmas Day episode in 2000, and managed 10.8 million in 2011.

But last year’s episode had ratings of only 7.0 million.

And EastEnders has seen its Christmas Day audience slump from 14.4 million as recently as 2007 to only 8.1 million last year.