No reason to highlight ITV4 ratings – it's the big days that matter

Prominent among a number of points raised in last week's farewell internet column by former Channel 4 pundit Graham Cunningham were the ratings achieved by ITV, and specifically its ITV4 sister channel, across the opening two months of its tenure as British racing's exclusive mainstream broadcaster.

Cunningham, recently snapped up by the Hong Kong Jockey Club, for which he will no doubt be a massive success, questioned why those scribes, not least this one, who regularly noted disappointing viewing figures in Channel 4 Racing's final ill-fated incarnation, were not equally interested in covering the ITV4 numbers.

Regular readers of this column may, however, remember a piece last month in which, not for the first time since ITV won the rights over a year ago, I expressed my own strongly held opinion that it is absolutely not the ITV4 ratings that should concern us.