C5’s Big Benefits Row comes five weeks too late, nabs 1.9m
Monday evening brought a deluge of soaps from the heavens as the TV nation kicked off a brand new week with some familiar and predictable drama.
ITV’s Emmerdale was the first up at 7pm and saw the still new and shiny Barton family fall out over a dodgy business deal (which seems to be how most people spend their days in this particularly sleepy hamlet).
A total of 7.2 million viewers watched as James and his sister-in-law Moira clashed, with the village’s quota for bad boys reaching saturation point. The rural shenanigans secured an audience share of 33% and Monday’s third biggest audience.
The biggest hit of the day came up next as Weatherfield’s resident old dear Norris let slip some important and scandalous information. The first episode of Coronation Street on ITV at 7:30pm saw Tracy Barlow get a little bit manic upon hearing of her boyfriend’s lip-locking session with Street Madame, Tina.
8.8 million viewers watched as yet another cat fight kicked off in the Rovers (perhaps some door staff wouldn’t go amiss) as convicted murderer Tracy went for it with spray-tan enthusiast Tina. The Monday night pantomime managed to secure a 38% share and Monday’s biggest audience.
An hour later the second slice of shouty drama at 8:30pm pulled in a lower audience with a little over 8 million viewers tuning in to see dashing love rat ™ Rob chucked out on to the nation’s favourite street.
Sandwiched in-between at 8pm was EastEnders over on BBC One as Masood learned that getting hammered on a Monday is never a good idea. 7.1 million viewers watched as the former postman decided to have a glass of beer, only for his life to subsequently spiral out of control.
After committing one robbery and being the victim of a mugging, Masood began to realise the dangers of the demon drink, netting an impressive 30% audience share in the process.
Things weren’t looking any brighter in the 9pm slot as DCI Banks returned for a third series of gloomy crime solving on ITV. The first case of the new run saw Stephen Tompkinson’s haunted detective ™ invite Monday night viewers on the hunt for a missing child through the haunted landscape of Yorkshire.
5.7 million viewers kicked off a new week of prime time fun by joining Banks for the grim hunt – making the North look like a washed out wasteland – easily winning the biggest audience for its time slot and bringing in a 23% share.
It would seem that the nation’s appetite for procedural desolation programming remains unsatisfied – last night’s figure is a notable rise from the 4.4 million that tuned in for the first episode of DCI Banks‘ second series in October 2012.
Over on BBC One, Jeremy Paxman just couldn’t get enough of all that First World War business as he excitedly explained to us how fantastic the whole thing was. The second episode of Britain’s Great War saw a significant drop in viewers week on week, falling by a massive 26%.
3.1 million viewers returned to find out how the UK adapted to war and the corners that had to be cut in order to fight off the enemy – even beer had to be watered down. Paxman’s enthusiastic saunter down memory lane brought in a 13% share for BBC One.
Meanwhile on BBC Two, Horizon and rock star geologist Iain Stewart convinced us all we were going to die by random sinkholes appearing and dragging us down to hell. Especially if you live in Florida.
Stewart – whose presentation style fits somewhere between Brian Cox’s special brand of whimsical wonder and the cockiest lad in your class at school – pointed at maps, ate some sand (his edgy signature move) and practiced a future were potholes will swallow your house.
1.9 million viewers watched as Swallowed by a Sinkhole‘s (9pm) fascinating topic was diluted with Stewart’s stunt presenting, but still managed an 8% share.
But of course last night’s main event was all about the thrilling heart-stopping finale of The Jump on Channel 4 at 9pm. After eight amazing episodes, viewers’ nerves were shattered as – at long last – one of the many contestants was finally crowned the-bestest-sort-of-famous-person-who-can-jump-one-metre-on-skis.
A standard 1.5 million viewers watched as an extremely grateful Joe McElderry received the validation he so desperately craved, making room on his trophy shelf alongside his X Factor and Popstar to Operastar triumphs. The boy just loves winning inconsequential competitions.
The reality competition – that Channel 4 will undoubtedly never speak of again – did manage to score a 6 % share, even if it didn’t manage to give the nation Winter Olympic fever.
At the same time, Channel 5 was subtly wading into the controversial benefits debate, rushing its ‘insightful’ production out to ride the wave of deliberation created by Channel 4’s Benefits Street five long weeks ago.
The Big Benefits Row featured intellectual luminaries such as Matthew Wright and the ever-lovely Kate Hopkins, just to prove to the nation that Channel 5 can ‘do’ debate. What followed was an hour of limp button-pushing, giving viewers about as much intelligent insight as you’d find at the bottom of a bag of Monster Munch.
1.9 million brave souls (an 8% share) managed to soldier through the entire 60 minutes of incredulous sound bites and painful self-promoting, as if an actual real-life debate was happening.
Naturally, The Big Benefits Row was the exact type of show designed to push the more vocal and easily outraged among us to Twitter, with the show ranking as the most tweeted about show of the day.
A total of 95,833 tweets were sent out during broadcast, resulting in a fairly impressive 52 tweets for every 1,000 users.
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.