ITV yesterday admitted defeat in their bid to move football into the Saturday evening prime-time schedule by announcing The Premiership highlights programme will move back to a 10.30 p.m. slot from November 17th.

The programme, billed as the flagship of ITV's new £350million sterling deal to cover the English top flight in partnership with Sky for the next three seasons, has attracted poor viewing figures in its current slot.

The show replaced the BBC's Match of the Day at the start of this season when the corporation lost their rights to Premiership coverage.

It was launched amid promises that unlike its predecessor The Premiership would not require football fans to stay up late on a Saturday night.

But the show has failed to capture the sort of viewing figures the station expected, with an average of 4.4 million tuning in each week - making it unattractive to advertisers.

It was consistently beaten in terms of audience figures by Ulrika Jonsson's BBC1 game show Dog Eat Dog.

ITV's climbdown comes a day after the company claimed the programme would stay in the 7 p.m. slot. Spokesman Paul Tyrrell had said: "The station has no plans at all to change the timing. Ratings are increasing, and we've never been more proud of the channel's sports programme."

Desmond Lynam, the presenter, and one of the biggest advocates for moving Match of the Day to an earlier slot when he introduced the BBC's programme, had welcomed the original move. "Better for you, better for all of us - good evening," he said by way of welcome on August 18th.

On hearing yesterday's news Lynam admitted: "I am disappointed that ITV are moving The Premiership's start time because I feel confident it would have achieved higher audiences in due course."