Agrentina secures place in final and peaks at 12.6m on ITV
Wednesday saw ITV win over the evening audience with a solid line-up featuring a mix of the country’s favourite soaps and the exclusive broadcast of the FIFA World Cup 2014‘s very last semi-final match.
The rustic tranquillity of Emmerdale (ITV) got the evening started at 7pm with a bout of infection for Andy Sugden’s manky hand.
The long-running character (Andy hasn’t actually managed to escape the village of the damned since he showed up a whopping 18 years ago as a troubled 12 year old tearaway) hasn’t been having a great time of it as of late, after learning last week that drunken friends and hay balers don’t make great bedfellows.
Last night 5 million viewers tuned in to see Andy confront the Bartons with his compensation plans, before rushing back to hospital in serious pain. ITV’s first soap of the evening brought in a 31% share.
Up straight afterwards was the midweek visit to Coronation Street (ITV, 7:30pm) as Izzy and Gary reached a big decision about the future of their extremely irritating relationship. The night’s second biggest audience tuned in to see the street’s least likely couple break up, only one year after they paid deceased tart Tina McIntyre to sprog their spawn.
An average audience of 6.1 million viewers tuned in for the latest action on Coronation Street, resulting in a 34% share. A repeat of You’ve Been Framed (8pm) filled the gap until the night’s big game, with 2.9 million viewers tuning in for the original purveyor of viewer-created content.
Despite sacrificing the second half of Holby City (8pm) to clash with the football, the medical drama performed well for BBC One, netting a near-standard audience of 3.2 million viewers and a 17% share.
Over on Channel 4, crusading broadcaster advertorial enthusiast Dawn O’Porter continued on her latest odyssey to upcycle forgotten old tat. The third episode of This Old Thing: The Vintage Clothes Show (8pm) saw the master of the retro makeover travel all the way to glamorous Doncaster, with an audience of 886,000 viewers and a 5% share joining in on the shoulder pad-sponsored transformational journey.
At the same time on BBC Two, Monty Don and Joe Swift were getting all hot and bothered about plants on RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show 2014 (8pm). The second day of the baroque extravaganza pulled in BBC Two’s biggest audience of the day with 1.9 million viewers and a 10% share.
8:30pm on ITV brought the second semi-final of the FIFA World Cup 2014, with the action properly kicking off at 9pm. Although only 4.8 million tuned in for the first half an hour of build-up, the audience jumped to 12.3 million viewers just as the game kicked off.
Viewer interest peaked in the final fifteen minutes of the first half, with 12.6 million people watching at 9:30pm.
Even though there wasn’t one single goal scored throughout the 90 minute match (and eventually running for over four hours), the entire coverage secured an average audience of 9.5 million, with a 50% share watching Argentina qualify for their fifth World Cup final.
There wasn’t much competition to lure football fans away, with a repeat of Death in Paradise (9pm) bringing in 2.2 million viewers and a 9% share on BBC One.
Over on BBC Two, it was time for Neil Oliver and his team of Countryfile-esque presenters to deliver the final episode of the made-for-HD-TV Coast Australia (9pm). The trip to Western Australia’s Coral Coast brought in 1.2 million viewers and a 5% share.
Over on Channel 4, the screaming-in-agony siren call of One Born Every Minute attracted 1.3 million viewers and a 6% share, while The Hotel Inspector Returns (9pm) was watched by 867,000 viewers and a 4% share on Channel 5.
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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