It was reported earlier this year that ITV1 had borne the brunt of the decline in commercial TV ratings under the new Barb panel, prompting fears of rapid inflation in the price of TV advertising airtime, which would further discourage already reluctant advertisers.
ITV's share of total channels fell to 39.9%, down from 46.6% a year ago. Its share of the commercial audience fell to 25.1% from 28.9% last time.
The news comes at a time when viewers have been deserting ITV, the largest commercial network, as its licence fee-funded rival the BBC steals its market share with more mainstream programming of the kind that has traditionally appeared on ITV.
Despite the rise in such programming on the BBC, it has failed to increase BBC One's audience share, which fell to 25.3% from 26.5% last time.
However, the new Barb measurement systems shows that the overall share of commercial channels grew to 63%, up from 62.6%, during the first quarter of 2002.
Channel 4's share of commercial channels rose to 16% from 15.8%, while its share of total channels rose to 10.1% from 9.8%.
Out of the terrestrial channels, Channel 5 was the star performer up to 6.4% from 5.5% of all channels and up to 10.1% from 8.9% of commercial channels.
The research shows that more and more viewers are turning to digital, with cable and satellite channels taking a 34.1% share of commercial channels, and a 21.4% of total channels.
IPA research director Lynne Robinson said: "This report covers the data produced by the new Barb panel and, as such, is not strictly comparable with the old Barb panel. There are clear differences in these two data sets in terms of overall recorded viewing in both reach and average hours. However, the share of viewing between channels has continued to show the same trends across both panels."
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