ITV trashes BBC One in Tuesday night showdown
ITV dominated last night’s late evening schedule with BBC One’s big shows suffering a noticeable loss in popularity. It seems Tuesday evening’s viewers could hardly resist the draw of yet another hour and a half of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! (8:30pm), an hour long edition of Emmerdale (7pm) and a standard everyday portion of Coronation Street (8pm).
Not only did ITV leave its competitors no chance of retaliation when it offered up an arsenal of top-shelf entertainment, but it also dared to do the unthinkable and cross the streams, breaking that unspoken rule that rival soaps should never be scheduled against each other.
Emmerdale started off the evening’s entertainment at 7pm, immediately pulling in the biggest audience share – something ITV managed to hang on to until 10pm. Yesterday’s hour-long trip to the Dales saw Laurel once again come face to face with her carjacker (super small village), netting an impressive 7.2 million viewers and a 33% share.
Unfortunately Emmerdale’s success came at EastEnders‘ loss, as the last half an hour of the rural rumpus clashed directly with BBC One’s flagship soap. Just one day after securing 7.4 million viewers, the Walford drama’s audience plummeted by a massive 31%.
In total, 5.1 million viewers tuned in to see the newly reunited Kat and Alfie learn that their precious Queen Vic was being sold. For most people this would be good news considering the long running series of traumatic events (characters on the show just call that ‘life’) that occurred there, with the couple’s (latest) devastation securing a lowly 23% share.
That was only the first direct shot of the night for ITV; next up at 8pm was Coronation Street which took on Holby City and won. Last night’s trip to Weatherfield mainly consisted of weighty and agonisingly lusty gazes between Tina McIntyre and Peter Barlow, making their ‘secret’ desires completely obvious to everyone – including viewers watching Holby on the other side.
7.5 million viewers tuned in to see if the amorous neighbours would get it on the night before Peter’s wedding, netting a 32% share, but not the biggest audience of the day.
Meanwhile on BBC One, Holby City wasn’t having a great day. The neverending medical drama has lately been securing up to 5 million viewers each week, but Coronation Street‘s pull saw it fall to 3.5 million (a 14% share) last night.
8:30pm brought another epically long episode of I’m a Celebrity… which easily won the day’s biggest audience. 8.4 million viewers watched as pirouetting Vincent Simone and professional annoyance Matthew Allwright finally got kicked out of the jungle, resulting in a 34% share.
A bit later at 9pm, ITV showed no mercy to sweet old dears Alan and Celia – the elderly couple at the centre of Last Tango in Halifax (BBC One) – savagely beating them about the place with the blunt might of its winning streak.
The third episode of the second series saw the newly married pair attempt to traverse all the modern issues their ultra-modern families were dealing with and lost 2 million viewers in the process. Whatever witchcraft ITV were using last night, it resulted in the audience for the popular cross-generational drama falling to 4.5 million viewers and an 18% share.
Meanwhile on Channel 4, The Sound of Musicals closed its doors on the catty world of the West End for good, securing 621,000 (down from 1 million) and a 3% share.
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