Sky’s failure to reach an agreement with Virgin Media continues to hit Sky One’s ratings.

Last night’s episode of 24 attracted just 394,000 viewers down from the 529,000 it attracted two weeks ago when still available to cable viewers.

The audience was slightly higher than last week’s 354,000 but significantly down on the 686,000 who tuned in to the opening episode of the current series.

Fellow US import Lost 853,000, up on the same week but down from the 11th February audience of 1.3 million and lower than the series average of 1 million.