March 18, 2008 -- Director Nick Broomfield's film, Battle for
Haditha, received its world television premiere last night in
England--and finished dead last in its time slot.
While nearly six million viewers tuned into The Fixer last
night, less than a million tuned to
Channel 4's presentation of Battle for Haditha. Those viewers
represented less than five percent of the viewing public in England,
and is equivalent to the audience for a bottom-rated cable news show,
"Countdown with Keith Olbermann" on MSNBC, in the United States.
Popular Monday night soaps, Coronation Street and EastEnders,
drew nearly 11 million viewers each.
Late
last year, Broomfield
lost his U.K. distributor, Metrodome Distribution, after the movie
failed to generate interest on the festival circuit. North American
distributors stayed away completely.
Broomfield based his film on second and third-hand accounts of the
incident and falsely claimed it was based on the stories of Marines
"who were there".