Corrie’s funeral fight KO’s Brazil’s victory on ITV
Monday night brought two major clashes to UK screens, with one battle involving two soap rivals, while the later face-off was more of the traditional FIFA World Cup 2014 sort.
With all the football hoopla forcing the forgotten ratings darlings to hop about the schedule in an effort to accommodate the inescapable tournament, one soap in particular has really felt the burn.
In an effort to make up for all the messing about, Monday night saw the broadcasters offer up not one, but two double episodes of the nation’s top long-running serials.
Essentially, Coronation Street was first out onto the battlefield at 7:30pm on ITV with the sixty minutes of high drama focusing on all the fun to be had at Tina’s funeral.
The day’s biggest audience tuned in to see Peter Barlow come to blows with murderous bad boy Rob Donovan at the Weatherfield service, begging the question of how any character on this soap is still allowed to hold any event at the local church.
An average audience of just over 7 million viewers watched as clueless suspect Peter Barlow inadvertently fingered himself in front of the handful of family and friends he has left, netting a 34% share.
All the flung fists over on ITV spelled bad news for the hour-long edition of EastEnders (8pm) over on BBC One. While the London-based soap didn’t have a big dramatic event to revolve around there was still plenty of intense shouting, broken souls and long drawn-out heated glances – basically just another Monday in Walford.
With the second half of Coronation Street bleeding into the first half of EastEnders‘ slot, BBC One’s flagship programme once again suffered from a torn audience. On top of that, ITV’s coverage of the big game of the night overshadowed the second half of the East End aggravation, even though you’d imagine viewers would pick Phil Mitchell’s face over Adrian Chiles’ any day of the week.
A worryingly low (and now consistent) audience of 5.3 million viewers tuned in to see Ronnie have a heart-to-heart with cousin Phil (never a good idea), netting BBC One’s biggest audience of the day with a 24% share.
Back over on ITV, Cameroon faced a proper whipping from tournament hosts Brazil, with coverage under way from 8:30pm and the Group A game kicking off properly at 9pm.
An average audience of 5.2 million viewers (a 27% share) tuned in for the 4-0 victory for Brazil, peaking at 6.4 million as the second half kicked off.
At 9pm BBC One and Channel 4 offered repeats of previously successful shows in order to attract the biggest share of football refugees. On the BBC, Amanda Redman was back as the face of New Tricks in an episode from 2011. The tale of a poisoned market stall trader brought in an audience of 2.4 million viewers while a repeat of 24 Hours in A&E secured just 850,000 viewers and a 4% share for Channel 4.
There was some factual content on offer on the remaining two terrestrial channels as BBC Two had a look at the grim realities of Police Under Pressure (9pm), with the stark budget cuts securing 1.3 million viewers and a 6% share.
Over on Channel 5 it was time for a second visit to Twitter-bait material Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole at 9pm, which is basically Benefits Street but with a much looser narrative. Last night’s episode was watched by 2.2 million viewers and a 10% share, resulting in Channel 5’s biggest hit of the day.
At the same time on BBC Three was the one-off cautionary tale Murdered by My Boyfriend (9pm), the tale of a smart young woman who fell for the wrong man. Even though the drama was watched by only 781,000 viewers, it was the most tweeted about show of the day, generating 25,928 tweets throughout its broadcast.
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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