Unstoppable Britain’s Got Talent flattens the competition
As expected, the hyperbole of unnaturally bright smiles, flashing lights and the sound bite-sized tales of tragedy that makes up Britain’s Got Talent (ITV, 7pm), ate up the competition on Saturday as the hype was ramped up to unbearable levels for the live semi final.
After ITV treated the lucky television-viewing nation to an entire week of 1.5 hour shows, Saturday finally hinted at some light at the end of the tunnel as all the hopefuls were whittled down to the final ten.
The biggest audience of the entire weekend tuned in to see the return of the UK’s favourite 79 year old salsa enthusiast, with 7.2 million tuning in to see the drama stretched out just that bit further. In the end, the dilly dallying tactics of the semi-final netted a 38% audience share.
Naturally, that wasn’t all the inescapably omnipresent show had to offer – Britain’s Got Talent Results offered another half an hour of distracting procrastination at 9:30pm, with 5.6 million viewers (a 27% share) tuning in to see six acts sent off to the slaughter house of dreams.
The overpowering, unstoppable franchise left little room for other shows to thrive in Saturday’s ecosystem, with BBC One’s weary and exhausted medical drama Casualty (9pm) limping into Saturday’s third place.
4.3 million viewers spent Saturday night in the company of the ever-emotional professionals of Holby City, with an audience share of 22% tuning in for the latest assortment of issues-driven storylines.
Straight afterwards another repeat of Mrs Brown’s Boys secured 3.1 million viewers for BBC One at 9:30pm while ITV enticed 2.9 million viewers over to their side at 8:30pm with World Cup Epic Fails.
BBC Two spent yet another Saturday looking back to the past with a helping of classics from yesteryear. A double bill of Fawlty Towers (8pm) and The Goodies (8:35pm) netted 1 million and 846,000 viewers, respectively, before schedule-filling clip show I Love 1973 (9:05pm) brought in an audience of 1.1 million viewers.
Sunday saw the popular shows offer slightly more variety with Countryfile (BBC One, 7pm) – usually Sunday’s shiny and dependable crown jewel – being overthrown for the second week in a row. After getting assaulted by a surprise Britain’s Got Talent last week, yesterday saw an unholy episode of Coronation Street
(ITV, 9pm) make a shock Sunday appearance.
A lower than usual audience of 5.5 million viewers tuned in to see Ellie Harrison wander about some woods while Matt Baker visited his 10 millionth country estate in his career to date. Elsewhere, Adam Henson was scouring the Queen’s Balmoral estate for a strong young bull, helping bring in a 29% share.
At the same time over on ITV, the commercial channel launched its big guns in an effort to counteract BBC One’s Sunday dominance. Unfortunately, ITV overestimated the draw of dead-behind-the-eyes Stephen Mulhern and his barely famous mates in Catchphrase: Celebrity Special (7pm).
Sunday’s fifth biggest audience – a flaccid 4 million viewers – tuned in to see Jo Brand, Denise Van Outen and the obligatory Coronation Street star take on the complicated and mysterious clues from Mr Chips, resulting in a 22% share.
Later, Michael Flatley: A Night to Remember (7pm) made a bit of an impact with 3.5 million viewers tuning in to ITV to see if the aged dancer still had it twenty years on from Riverdance.
Over on BBC One at 9pm was the second episode of period/thriller/medical/crime drama (an ever-growing genre) Quirke, starring Gabriel Byrne. Down from the opening episode’s audience of 4.2 million viewers, the second slice of the rogue pathologist action brought in 3.7 million viewers and an 18% share.
But Quirke had some competition in the 9pm slot as Coronation Street – not content on ruling over the weekday schedules – grabbed the day’s biggest audience.
The soap’s recent schedule hoping antics, all based around Tina McIntyre‘s violent exit, has produced two distinctive outcomes. Earlier than usual 7pm showings have resulted in a significant loss in viewers, while last week’s run of prime time 9pm episodes resulted in the soap’s usual success.
6.8 million viewers tuned in to see the orange-skinned home wrecker’s condition deteriorate as Weatherfield’s most inept police officers continued investigating her attack, netting a 26% share.
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.
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