7.36 million people in Germany watched the final of the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest yesterday. This means that about one million paople more than last year tuned in to follow the programme.
The viewing figures were higher than last year and are back at the level of the 2007 and 2005 Eurovision Song Contests, although no German national final was held this year. The countdown programme starting at 20:15 was followed by 4.05 million people and the programme after thefinal was watched by 2.72 million people giving a total average of viewers for all three shows of 6.38 million viewers. The Eurovision Song Contest was therefore the most watched programme of the day by a landslide. As always in recent years, it was also more successful than the final of Deutschland sucht den Superstar (Pop Idol), which had been held one week before the Eurovisision Song Contest on channel RTL, although that talent search usually draws far more media attention.
The first semi final, which was only broadcast on the minor speciality channel Phoenix, had only been watched by 260,000 people. However, the market share of 1,0% was still twice as high as the average market share of that channel. Overall, the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest can be seen as success for the broadcasters.
Alex Swings Oscar Sings! represented Germany with the song Miss kiss kiss bang and finished 20th in the final.
