Corrie nets 7.8m for ITV as soaps rule the midweek schedule
Wednesday evening’s top shelf entertainment kicked off with the usual barrage of soapy drama with a visit to Emmerdale leading the way at 7pm on ITV.
6.6 million viewers tuned in for the latest action up on the Dales, bringing in a 32% audience share for the commercial broadcaster. This was followed by a rare single episode of Coronation Street straight afterwards, which basically consisted of Hayley upping her morphine dosage.
The latest drama from the Street saw perpetually miserable Leanne continue to wallow in her unhappiness, all the while pretending to run a restaurant while delivering her descriptive prose and monologues.
Leanne and Nick’s latest bout of relationship doubt secured the day’s biggest audience, with 7.8 million viewers and a 36% share.
Straight afterwards on BBC One at 8pm, Sonia Fowler continued to make everyone of a certain age feel ancient by presenting her toilet baby of yesteryear as a mature guitar playing young adult.
Also having a bad day on EastEnders (it’s kind of obligatory) was Masood, who was reeling from his break up with Carol and the caustic presence of his daughter Shabnam – whose portrayal has actually resulted in the BBC receiving complaints because their drama shouldn’t reflect any social issues as it might offend someone sensitive in Market Deeping.
6.7 million viewers watched as Masood threw caution to the wind and knocked back – not one – but two cans of beer, sending his daughter fleeing from the house. The latest half hour of hard-hitting social commentary (possibly) brought in BBC One’s biggest audience of the day and a 29% share.
At the same time on BBC Two was the third and penultimate episode of The Great Sports Relief Bake Off (8pm), which gave viewers the surreal prospect of seeing Jamelia and Emma Freud competitively baking.
For the second night in a row the charitable spin-off’s audience settled at 4.3 million viewers, guaranteeing the channel its most popular show of the day and a 19% share.
After its popular soaps were done with, ITV then gave its entire evening schedule to the Live FA Cup (8pm) game between Manchester City and Blackburn Rovers, broadcast live from the Etihad Stadium.
An average audience of 3.3 million viewers stayed tuned for the entire coverage (which went over two hours and twenty minutes) watching as Blackburn were well and truly destroyed by the home team, resulting in a 15% share.
The audience actually peaked at kick off, with over 4 million people tuning in before tailing off before the first of five Man City goals forty minutes in.
At 9pm on BBC One Waterloo Road was back for some more unrealistic classroom drama, bringing in an audience of 3.3 million viewers. The first half of the educational fun was overshadowed by the Bake Off but nabbed the biggest audience for the first half an hour of the 9pm slot, with the football taking over until 10pm.
The rest of the 9pm line up consisted of observational reality shows, which splintered into with varying degrees of wrong.
On BBC Two, Wild Brazil continued to inspire wonder in audiences with its middle episode. The familiar format – awe inspiring landscapes, cute little critters leading to a traumatic attack by predators – helped secure 2 million viewers and a 9% share.
At the same time, Channel 4 was offering up real people screaming in agony as late night entertainment in 24 Hours in A&E (9pm). The extremely brutal show last night focused on elderly patients all attempting to ignore their own mortality. 2.3 million happy viewers watched as the stars of the show awaited news of their fate, securing a 10% share.
As usual, Celebrity Big Brother (9pm) was found somewhere at the bottom of the barrel on Channel 5 as 2.3 million viewers watched desperate people erode away what’s left of their souls by performing sex acts on each other for the nation’s entertainment.
An 11% share tuned in to see the Luisa’s façade of professional businesswoman fall by the wayside as a dangerous bout of boredom swept through the house. As usual, last night’s eviction was the talk of Twitter with an impressive 65 tweets for every 1,000 viewers.
The Social TV Analytics report is a daily leaderboard displaying the latest social TV analytics Twitter data from SecondSync. The table shows the top UK TV shows as they are mentioned on Twitter, which MediaTel has correlated with the BARB overnight programme ratings for those shows (only viewable to BARB subscribers).
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. Overnight data supplied by TRP are based on 15 minute slot averages. This may differ from tape checked figures, which are based on a programme’s actual start and end time.