A rush of press releases has again greeted the latest TV audience figures from the European Media Survey, the only pan-European study covering international broadcasters. Each broadcaster is claiming to be ahead of the pack as the often-low audience news channels strive to produce a good performance.

According to CNBC Europe, the European business channel’s daily viewership is up 11 per cent to 340,000. CNBC also claims big improvements amongst upwardly mobile groupings: those who have TV at work (up 32 per cent); those who own equities (up 17 per cent) and bonds (up 31 per cent), the university educated (up 38 per cent) and women (up 52 per cent).

Likewise CNN claimed that it was consolidating its audiences. CNN was viewed by 50.5 per cent of respondents, an increase of 9 per cent over last year, a lead of 4.4 million viewers over the closest competition, BBC World, it said. CNN viewing was up 13.4 per cent, taking the network to a 33.4 per cent viewing share.

Euronews reports that it has increased its audience amongst high-income earners and is “narrowing the gap” with CNN. Euronews claims the results show that now only 49,000 viewers (or a gap of 3 per cent) separate it from CNN amongst the top 20 per cent of households by income in 16 European countries. The EMS 2000 survey shows that Euronews now has 1,523,000 viewers daily across Europe (compared to CNN’s 1,572,000).