Football earns BBC double ratings victory

Crunch Euro 2008 football matches brought strong audiences to both BBC One and BBC Three on Tuesday.

Coverage of Italy's 2-0 victory over France, on the flagship channel between 7.30pm and 10pm, was watched by 6.3m (28.4%) - the largest audience of the tournament so far.

BBC Three gained a clear lead over its digital-only rivals thanks to the Netherlands' 2-0 defeat of Romania. The channel's coverage, also from 7.30pm to 10pm, drew 612,000 (3.2%). The matches were crucial in deciding qualifiers for the knock-out stages.

ITV1 put up a fight until 8pm, with an hour-long Emmerdale attracting 5.9m (31.7%). However, a Midsomer Murders repeat from 8pm to 10pm managed just 3.8m (16.5%).

Channel 4's audience held up, with The F Word seen by 3.2m (13.6%) over an hour from 9pm then 286,000 more on C4+1. Big Brother, which followed, drew 3.3m (18.6%) then 150,000 on the timeshift.

BBC Two recorded 2.1m (9.5%) for Springwatch Gardens at 8pm then dropped slightly to 1.8m (7.8%) for The Supersizers Go… Elizabethan from 9pm.

On Five, 1.2m (5.4%) saw a CSI repeat from 9pm then 1.4m (8%) tuned in for CSI: Miami an hour later.

BBC Three's closest multichannel competition came from E4, where the 7.30pm Big Brother's Little Brother was watched by 351,000 (2.1%).