TV Overnights: Tuesday’s TV takes flight with sewing, knitting and sleeping
Tuesday evening brought another exciting instalment of Channel 4’s latest attempt to push the boundaries of the televisual medium, as Bedtime Live (8pm) celebrated its ground-breaking fourth episode.
Once again, viewers from around the country were invited to experience the stressful and heinous task of getting unruly toddlers to sleep by 9pm. Because going through the real experience clearly isn’t punishment enough.
The show seems to be doing the trick for some people, as most of the past audience seems to have floated away to slumber land by the time it starts. Four weeks ago, the opening episode pulled in 1.3 million viewers with last night only managing an audience of 519,000 and a 2% share. Job done, then?
Channel 4 should really liven things up a bit by fusing their last ‘social experiment’ Drugs Live with their latest venture. It could only make things more bearable for the target audience.
ITV’s late evening schedule was taken over by the latest episode of the European soap opera that is UEFA Champions League Live (7:30pm). The game, live from the Turk Telekom Arena in Istanbul, saw home team Galatasaray hold a strong defence against invading team Real Madrid.
The pampered and preened lead star of last night’s drama, Cristiano Ronaldo, shook things up a bit by scoring his first goal 8 minutes in. An average audience of 3 million viewers watched the entire coverage as the home team retaliated with three direct strikes, securing an audience share of 13%. The audience peaked at 3.6 million viewers in the 90th minute as Ronaldo secured his second goal, ending in an aggregated score of 3-5 for his team.
Up against the intense slumber action and the football was a visit to the only NHS hospital not in danger of closing its doors. The 607th episode this year (estimate) of Holby City (8pm) performed to its usual standards, bringing in 4.9 million viewers and a 22% share for BBC One.
BBC Two also has reason to celebrate as the second helping of competitive sewing proved last week’s mild success wasn’t a one off. The Great British Sewing Bee (8pm) brought in the exact same amount of people as last week, with 2.6 million viewers (a 11% share) watching the amateurs being put through another 3 challenges.
Earlier in the day, two rival soaps resulted in the biggest hits of the day for their respective stations. 5.9 million viewers caught up with the latest developments in Emmerdale.
Life on EastEnders (BBC One, 7:30pm) was as messy as ever, as Sharon’s rubbish hen do continued. Things went from bad to worse as the Stag party ended up in the exact same venue as the ladies, because the East End of London is roughly two metres squared apparently. 7.5 million viewers tuned in for the genuinely surprising turn of events, securing a 35% share.
The Syndicate on BBC One easily held the biggest share in the 9pm slot as, you’ve guessed it, yet another member of the lottery winning team found out that money can actually make your life a bit more rubbish. 5.2 million viewers fell for the recession aversion therapy, pulling in a 22% share.
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.