Eurovision 2014’s gaudiness outshines Britain’s Got Talent
With Britain’s Got Talent (ITV, 7pm) pretty much ruling over the Saturday night airwaves without any real competiton for the past four weeks, the weekend saw BBC One roll out the talent show’s ultimate light entertainment adversary in the garish form of the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 (8pm).
For once Cowell’s talent soap for children seemed positively gritty, hard-hitting and edgy compared to the offering on the other side.
Not only did the eighth series of Simon Cowell’s reliable variety show get a head start by airing an hour earlier, but Britain’s Got Talent also boasted a much shorter running time, giving the jewel of ITV’s weekend line-up a pretty decent fighting chance.
In total, 8.7 million viewers tuned in to see the latest round of auditions, and as usual, the drama of the night came from the freakishly wrong getting sent on their way, while the TV-ready competitors with prepared emotional back stories were glorified by the judging panel.
The latest round of tears and contrived emotions captured a 41% share, which would usually be enough to secure the day’s biggest audience. But this wasn’t any usual Saturday night.
Straight up afterwards, over on BBC One it was time to play the music, it was time to light the lights as the pageantry of audio and visual punishment that is the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 kicked off.
While the media focused on the nasty politics and international tensions, the many, many finalists were busy sending their sultry stares down the camera lens, all the while managing to sing the lines and nail the theatrical expressions so necessary for Eurovision success.
The Eurozone extravaganza saw each country share homogenised, indistinguishable chart music with each other and was watched by 8.9 million exhausted viewers, taking the weekend’s top spot.
An average audience share of 42% survived all the way through to the end which saw Austria’s Conchita Wurst soak up the prestigious kudos from fellow countries for her intricate and original piece ‘Rise Like a Phoenix’.
It could be argued that the event’s biggest success was online; this year’s competition generated a massive 5,384,678 tweets during the broadcast. This translates to a whopping 613 tweets for every live viewers.
Over on ITV, Amazing Greys went head to head with the spectacle of procured silliness, with the ageing smarty-pants pulling in a 10% share and 2.2 million viewers.
Straight up afterwards, the commercial broadcaster offered up a nice alternative to the sparkly dresses and too-tough-for-foundation-beards, with a repeat of well-received thriller Prey.
Unfortunately the second episode couldn’t quite repeat last Monday’s 4.9 million viewers success, with only 865,000 viewers and a 4% share tuning in for the intense chase.
Over on Channel 4, Sam Worthington continued his post-Avatar career of ‘meh’ with yet another silly high concept action piece. Man on a Ledge (9:00pm) features not only the least convincing police negotiator ever cast (comedian Elizabeth Banks) but also a plot so silly it actually hurts to pay attention. 1.6 million viewers and a 6% share spent their Saturday night buckled in for the ‘thrill ride’.
As usual, Sunday brought a complete change of pace, with bearded Austrian ladies being replaced by the uncontroversial (and slightly dead) smiles of the friendly and unsurprising Countryfile (BBC One, 7pm) team.
Sunday’s biggest hit was made up of scenes of Ellie Harrison enjoying watching grey and confused Londoners enjoying some time outside while Adam Henson was on a mission to find a strong and handsome bull to attend to his livestock.
6.2 million viewers and a 31% shared joined in on the clean, honest-to-goodness countryside fun. Antiques Roadshow (8pm) followed next, netting 5.1 million viewers and a 22% share.
Over on ITV, regional alternative female detective show (a genre unto itself these days) Vera (8pm) was back for another two-hour case. 5.6 million viewers tuned in to see the salt-of-the-earth police woman mind-probe some posh types after a man’s body was found on a large northern estate.
A 24% audience share meant that Vera‘s latest bout of digging through other people’s dirt secured the biggest share for its time slot.
Which meant that the finale of suturing-and-crying drama The Crimson Field (BBC One, 9pm) was overshadowed by ITV’s offering. The sixth episode of the medical battlefield heroics still pulled in a healthy audience of 5 million viewers (a second series has already been ordered), with a 22% share tuning in to see if Suranne Jones’ frontline Sister would pay the ultimate price for some cheeky lovin’.
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.