TV Overnights: I’m a Celeb bows out with 9.4m for ITV1
The weekend brought us more of the same juggernaut reality TV shows, although at least one of them had the decency to wrap it up while it still had a prime time audience.
Friday
Friday night threw up very little surprises for the TV audiences with the traditional array of soaps (and one other usual suspect) sweeping up viewers’ attention.
Emmerdale (ITV1, 7pm) was the first show of the weekend to bring in a noticeably large audience. 6.9 million viewers tuned in to see Cain Dingle work his greasy charms on Moira, securing a 34% share.
The real drama lay in the fact that, for the second night in a row the rural soap proved more popular than its London rival, EastEnders. Katie’s big storyline saw her getting rescued after spending close to a week far below the fields of the sleepy village.
Not to say that EastEnders was lagging very far behind but if this keeps up the BBC need to ask themselves what ITV are seemingly doing so right. The week’s final visit to Walford, the centre of happiness, saw Alfie prepare for his getaway to Germany, all the while Kat skulked around in the background looking equally excited and guilty, like a horny Gollum.
Producers have promised that those of you who have been following the whole ‘Kat’s secret lover’ thing over the past 37 months, will be finally rewarded with the gift of knowledge just before Christmas.
6.8 million viewers watched as the mystery provider of good times splashed out on a candle for Kat, the idea being that she can light in in her window – a bat signal for the chronically adventurous. The cockney carry on may have been defeated by Emmerdale but still managed a 31% share.
The argument between these two soaps was put to a swift stop when the first episode of Coronation Street proved its weight at 7:30pm on ITV1. The latest goings on saw Fiz go all Jack Bauer – she was so deep undercover it was hard to keep track of her strategy.
The double helping on Friday saw the Knicker Stitching Executive’s career cut short as a result of standing up to Kirsty. But Fiz was playing the long-game – taking the fall in order to get her enemy to take her guard down. 8.3 million people watched the episode, increasing to 8.5 million (a 37% share) an hour later.
Which tearfully brought us to the penultimate episode of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out (ITV1) of Here at 9pm. So much has happened on this year’s journey which really helped it stand out from other series – insignificant celebrities cried, ate minging food and were ‘way out of their comfort zone’. Still, the format sees no signs of exhausting just yet – 9 million viewers (a 37% share) watched as David Haye was voted out, leaving two ladies to fight it out for the coveted prize.
Saturday
Channel 4 saw fit to beat viewers into submission with not one but five episodes of Come Dine with Me: Ireland, the usual cringy format but now with added magical accents. The full on assault began at 4:20pm and ended at 6:55pm. The five episodes managed an average audience of 975,000 viewers, all tuning in for five courses of reheated mash.
Filling the schedules with bloated editions of popular programmes is an idea schedulers have really taken to their hearts. Strictly Come Dancing showed up punctually at 6:50pm, eager to whisk us off for an hour and ten minutes of spinning and grinning.
Mercifully, as the contestants were thrown in the Raggy Doll bin each week, the running time has been shorter. At this rate the finale will last all of ten minutes. Strictly fox trotted past the competition and secured 9.9 million viewers and secured a 42% share, the biggest audience of the weekend.
Merlin (BBC One, 8pm) followed, providing your family with its weekly requirement of magic, adventure and big-eared heroes. 5.5 million viewers watched the soon-to-be-unemployed cast ham it up in the fifth to last episode, resulting in a 42% share.
The X Factor continued to slip further into the oblivion (possibly being slightly dramatic there) as it seemed that there just weren’t enough viewers to watch three mammoth reality shows in one night. 7.7 million tuned in to see the final four acts battle for survival with only their voices and audience manipulation skills as weapons.
Well that wasn’t too bad, was it? Saturday brought the end of I’m a Celebrity, which saw soap star Charlie Brooks battle it out with a former Pussycat Doll for Top Dog of the Jungle. 9.4 million viewers, watched as Walford Queen Bee Charlie pummelled Ashley Roberts to death in the rock pool (relatively speaking, in terms of their popularity), resulting in a 40% share.
At the same time on BBC Two was Oscar winning director Spike Lee’s in depth look at the making of Michael Jackson’s seventh album Bad (the one were Jackson felt he needed to sell himself as ‘street’ to the African American community – errr), 25 years after its release.
The programme focused closely on the music, going through the album track by track. 807,000 viewers watched Michael Jackson: BAD 25 (9:45pm), catching never before seen glimpses into the troubled singer’s life, resulting in a 5% share.
Sunday
Sunday saw ITV1 make a crucial mistake by bringing Monday’s hour long Coronation Street (7pm) forward by a day to make room for the Royal Variety Performance. A smaller than usual audience of 6.3 million viewers tuned in for the uninterrupted action from Weatherfield, securing a 24% share.
7:20pm on BBC One saw cricket person Michael Vaughan tango his last as he failed to make the cut on Strictly Come Dancing: The Results. 9.3 million people watched the mercifully short announcement, resulting in Sunday’s biggest audience and a 34% share.
Sunday’s The X Factor Results (ITV1, 8pm) brought some disappointment for a hopeful boy band. After sitting in purgatory for the past twenty four hours, the Fifteen Minutes of Fame regulatory force finally caught up with Union J, destroying their VIP passes and stripping them of their free hair products. 8.7 million people watched as Pink (her of sass and attitude ™) flogged her latest ground breaking single, securing a 34% share.
The Secrets of Crickley Hall, the drama with dead kids jumping out of every second dilapidated doorway, wrapped up its story with 5.8m tuning in (a 23% share) for the seriously heavy Sunday evening downer.
Slightly less terrifying was Steppin’ Out with Katherine Jenkins (ITV1, 9pm). If it sounds like a cheeky euphemism, you would have been sorely disappointed. The casual apostrophe in the title lets you know how much fun the programme was. The naff cabaret pulled in 3.5 million viewers and a 14% share. I guess, with the absence of jungle nonsense, ITV1 has to fill its schedule somehow.
Overnight data is available each morning in mediatel.co.uk’s TV Database, with all BARB registered subscribers able to view reports for terrestrial networks and key multi-channel stations.