RTÉ show high audience share for election

RTÉ have reported strong audience figures for their marathon coverage of the General Election results.
RTÉ Television's Election 2002 went on the air at 11pm on Friday May 17, to await the first results from the electronic counts. Over the next two hours, some 250,000 viewers watched RTÉ One. The programme had a 49.2% share of all adults watching television.
On Saturday, the Election 2002 programme between noon and 1pm drew a 50.6% share of adults.
When continuous coverage began at 3pm on Saturday, 223,000 people tuned in. This figure climbed steadily to reach 607,400 people who watched the 9 O'Clock News. The RTÉ One audience share at this point was 49.9% of adults, and with a share of 51.5% of men and 48.5% of women viewers. The post-midnight Election 2002 coverage continued to draw a high audience share, with 44% of adults staying with it into the small hours of Sunday morning.
Election 2002 was anchored by Brian Farrell, Miriam O'Callaghan, John Bowman and Bryan Dobson, with reports from RTÉ's news and current affairs staff at every count centre.
Meanwhile, RTÉ Online also reported a large number of hits from users seeking election updates. The Election 2002 page on the RTÉ website attracted 265,162 page impressions on Saturday, and a further 90,787 on Sunday. As the average for RTÉ News online is 50,000 page impressions per day, this represents a massive upsurge in interest.
There was also high demand for the SMS message service offered by RTÉ Online to those anxious for election news: 2,800 subscribers had received over 25,000 SMS messages by 5pm on Sunday.
RTÉ also covered Election 2002 comprehensively on TG4, Radio 1, Raidió na Gaeltachta and Aertel.
RTÉ, www.rte.ie
(GMcG)