TV Overnights: Corrie defeats the football despite Chelsea’s best efforts
Last night saw soap fans reel in horror as football bled into the schedules, forcing Coronation Street to air much earlier than usual – resulting in a significant drop in viewers.
The midweek trip to Weatherfield saw the drama go a bit Jeremy Kyle as Gary faced the repercussions of making a pass on his unborn child’s surrogate mother. Pure class, all round.
It’s enough to make you hark back to the days of the simple coach crash.
Only 5.7 million viewers managed to catch up with Britain’s most popular soap at the unusually awkward time of 6:45pm, as Tina’s long-suffering fella, Tommy, caught wind of Gary’s ungentlemanly behaviour. An audience share of 31% watched as yet another ASBO-standard street confrontation played out, adding to the fall in local property prices.
While the long-running soap may have had an unceremoniously bad time slot, it still proved to be the most popular programme of the entire day.
Straight up afterwards was the moment many soap fans have been waiting with baited breath for many months now – the final game of the UEFA Europa League (ITV, 7:15pm). Apparently football fans were a little bit excited too.
After a whole half hour of hyperbole conveyance, Matt Smith finally stepped out of the way to allow the game between Chelsea and Portuguese team Benfica to kick off. Live from the neutral grounds of Amsterdam Arena, the game was slow to start as both teams held on tight to their defences.
Viewers peaked to 6.6 million viewers in the second half as Torres scored the game’s first goal in the 60th minute. Overall, an average audience of 5.2 million viewers watched the entire coverage which resulted in Chelsea beating Benfica 2-1. An average share of 24% witnessed Chelsea go on to lift the UEFA Cup, Super Euro League or whatever it’s known as now.
9pm brought the second week but third episode of scrapping-the-barrel fun with Sir Alan of Sugar on The Apprentice (BBC One).
Last night saw his cluster of aprentii charged with the not so easy task of creating a new flat pack piece of furniture and marketing it effectively. Shockingly, it wasn’t long before the creative meetings descended into the usual farce as each candidate’s mask began to slip, with no amount of painful premium marketing waffle helping to cover the fact.
5.7 million viewers tuned in to see a group of aspirational public school wannabes face off against a crowd of screeching painted ghouls, resulting in BBC One’s biggest hit of the day. The latest endeavour to highlight humanity’s new yardstick of low pulled in a 23% share.
While Sir Alan’s ignorant jesters were jumping through hoops we were actually being distracted from the real villains over on BBC Two. In a brilliant display of smoke and mirrors scheduling many people missed out on the second episode of Bankers (9pm), which looked at the high-risk world of trading and the low-concern attitudes of the most hated men in the modern world.
The distraction tactic looked like it worked as only 600,000 viewers tuned in, down ever so slightly from last week’s audience of 851,000. The informative and terrifying programme attracted a 2.5% share.
Speaking of terrifying, Channel 4 treated viewers to another look at the horror that’s played out on our streets everyday with 24 Hours in A&E (9pm). Last night’s spot of pre-bedtime fun focused on a child with a broken head and became the channel’s biggest hit of the day. 2.2 million viewers treated themselves to the night shift in King’s College Hospital, resulting in a 9% 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.