While just under 600,000 viewers were watching Coronation Street on TV3 last Wednesday at 7.30 p.m., only 160,000 people tuned in to RTE 1's new series, Out of the Blue.
Coronation Street moved from RTE to TV3 on January 1st, and its fans have provided TV3 with its largest audiences ever.
On Monday night, the first night it was broadcast by TV3, there were just under 500,000 viewers. On Wednesday night this had climbed to just under 600,000. This compares with an average viewership of 685,000 when the programme was screened by RTE 1.
The largest audience TV3 had attracted in the past was 376,000 viewers when it broadcast an Irish away game in the World Cup qualifiers.
The number of viewers tuning in to Coronation Street on TV3 is not expected to continue climbing. Wednesday's increase is likely to have been because Monday was a bank holiday, a day when viewership figures are traditionally low.
The Wednesday night figures translate into a 42 per cent audience share, in a station with an overall share of 10 per cent. TV3's publicity manager, Ms Gillian Rowntree, said the station had not expected to secure quite so large a slice of the pie. "We're thrilled that so many people have tuned in," she said.
But it's not just Coronation Street that is tempting viewers. Twelve new Ford Fiestas are being given away by TV3 over the first 12 episodes with its telephone competition.
To date the station has received more than 60,000 calls on its competition hotline. "This is huge. Normally, 2 to 5 per cent of viewers respond to competitions," said Ms Rowntree.
TV3 reaches just over 90 per cent of the State, compared to RTE's 98 per cent coverage. RTE filled its traditional Coronation Street slot on Monday with a film, Deep Impact, which attracted 422,000 viewers.
On Wednesday a new series, Out of the Blue, began. Attracting 160,000 viewers, it is a marine series from Cork, presented by Derek Davis. The programme will run for eight weeks. The head of RTE television production, Ms Clare Duignan, said Coronation Street was a hugely popular programme, "and it was very obvious that when it went to TV3 most people would follow it".
"It would be unfair to viewers to put our top-rated programmes against it", she said. Fair City is outperforming Coronation Street this week, said Ms Duignan, and is the most popular soap in Ireland.
Meanwhile UTV is keen to emphasise its early Street associations. The station has embarked on an ad campaign, "Get the best view of the Street", which is being carried on Dublin buses.
A spokeswoman for UTV said: "As the first channel to bring Coronation Street to Ireland over 40 years ago, we wanted to make sure there was no confusion for our viewers with all the media coverage about Coronation Street moving from RTE."
More people throughout Ireland watch the programme on UTV than on any other channel, according to the spokeswoman, who said more than three-quarters of a million people on both sides of the Border tuned in to the Street on UTV on Monday and Wednesday nights.
As part of its Granada deal, TV3 is showing Emmerdale on Monday nights simultaneously with UTV. In the past RTE showed Emmerdale in the afternoons, with a three-month time lag behind UTV. "It has done well over the first two episodes, achieving a 15 per cent market share," said Ms Rowntree. Another Granada offering, Cold Feet, a thirtysomething drama, will be shown on TV3 from the end of February.
TV3's exclusive coverage of the Champions' League is also boosting ratings, pulling in between 250,000 and 300,000 viewers when a big team such as Manchester Utd are playing.
RTE's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? has claimed victory in the first head-to-head clash with the ITV version of the quiz series.
A spokeswoman for the Irish programme said 810,000 viewers watched Tuesday night's edition, when Gay Byrne was competing directly for the first time with his ITV counterpart, Chris Tarrant, who attracted 360,000 Irish viewers on the same night.
The spokeswoman noted that the ITV version was boosted this week by a special "couples" version of the quiz show. The audience for the Gay Byrne-fronted programme represented half of all Irish people watching television on Tuesday night, she said.