BBC One secures 9pm slot with Bishop’s jaunt down under
Monday saw TV viewers being treated to a second consecutive football-free day, with normality returning for a short while as the nation’s top soaps battled it out for ratings dominancy.
Emmerdale (ITV) got the evening’s entertainment under way at 7pm, with more rural intrigue and scheming. The day’s fourth biggest audience caught up with the latest mangled-hand-related drama from Home Farm, resulting in 5.7 million viewers and a 31% share.
The first of two trips to Weatherfield was on straight afterwards, with the 7:30pm edition of Coronation Street proving to be Monday’s biggest hit. A little over 7 million viewers tuned in to see Carla Barlow celebrate her traumatic marriage breakdown by enjoying one too many on a Monday night, resulting in a 36% share.
Later at 8:30pm, things were going from bad to worse for the street’s latest walking tragedy as Carla invited a young man back to her flat, only to make a bit of an arse of herself. The shameful drunken behaviour brought in the day’s second largest audience, with 6.4 million viewers and a 31% share.
If all that soap action wasn’t enough, 8pm saw EastEnders come along to sprinkle a little more glumness to proceedings. 6.1 million viewers watched as perpetual loser in life, Billy Mitchell, celebrated a grey and wet Monday by getting his electricity cut off.
The latest enthralling and life affirming scenes from Walford brought in a 31% share for BBC One.
Elsewhere, a clutter of factual programming filled the schedule until the 9pm slot, with Countrywise (8pm) on ITV securing 3 million viewers and a 14% share while Dispatches (8pm) on Channel 4 got all funny about Scotland’s new found sense of independence, bringing in 3 million viewers and a 14% share.
Over on BBC One, Panorama (8:30pm) took a look at the current turmoil in Iraq, with 2.2 million viewers tuning in to learn of ISIS’ latest activities.
At 9pm, BBC One pulled out all the big stops for their prime time offering, sending scouse comedian John Bishop on a nostalgia-chasing jaunt to Australia.
The first of three shows, inventively titled John Bishop’s Australia, saw the chancer return to retrace a cycling trip he took from Sydney to Cairns when he was a young fella… and that’s about all the thought behind the basic concept.
Bishop’s blatant attempt to recapture his youth would have been easier to digest if the TV license fee stretched far enough to accommodate a trip for every middle-aged man in the country.
Kind of like Coast Australia, but without all the bothersome educational bits, Bishop’s odyssey took in the biggest 9pm audience for BBC One, securing 4.2 million viewers and a 20% share.
At the same time, ITV was attempting to hold its own with a very special edition of its popular Saturday night game show. The Cube: Celebrity Special (9pm) saw EastEnders‘ queen bitch Charlie Brooks and retired England rugby player Ben Cohen make a spectacle of themselves in Philip Schofield’s eponymous box of tricks.
An audience of 2.2 million viewers watched as the two famous faces felt the pressure to perform for their chosen charities, netting a 10% share.
On Channel 4, an average audience of 711,000 viewers tuned in to learn the ultimate truth in The Armstrong Lie (9pm). Filmed over a number of years, including when news about the professional cyclist’s cheating broke, the brutally honest documentary featured an interview with Lance Armstrong himself and was watched by a 1% share.
Over on BBC Two, the corporation’s economic editor Robert Peston was busy waving his finger about, while perfecting his cautionary tone in Scotland: For Richer or Poorer? at 9pm. 1.4 million viewers watched as Preston pulled the notion of independence apart, resulting in a 6% share.
Meanwhile, somewhere near the bottom of the barrel, it was time for the penultimate episode of controversy-bait Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole (9pm) on Channel 5. Although it hasn’t quite made the impact of rival benefits-themed shows, the documentary was the channel’s biggest hit of the day with 2.2 million viewers and a 10% 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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