Despite impaired ratings soaps lead Thursday night’s TV
Thursday night brought a blockbuster evening of soapy treats with all three of the big players making an appearance, despite a lower-than-usual turn out. With the football hyperbole taking a short break until this weekend’s final two matches, last night delivered a welcome reminder of scheduling normality, with not one emotionally distraught football fan to be seen.
The first of an Emmerdale (ITV) double whammy went out on ITV at 7pm, bringing in 5.4 million viewers (a 32% share), while the second episode bucked tradition by actually securing a bigger audience than the earlier episode.
The 8pm visit to the UK’s most happening rural community won Thursday’s second biggest audience with 5.5 million viewers which translated to a smaller share of 29%.
Tucked away in between the gluttonous helping of disillusioned country life was urban soap EastEnders (7:30pm) over on BBC One. Yesterday’s drama once again centred around the turbulent and relatively new Carter family, who are constantly harking back to the glory days of the Slater family, whose deep, dark family secrets have been pouring out of nearly every episode.
The latest revelation (OMG – patriarch Danny Dyer and his missus aren’t even married!) underperformed, securing a lowly audience of 5.4 million viewers and a 30% share.
Afterwards on ITV, dominant soap Coronation Street (8:30pm) saw Gail’s bizarre friendship with a down-trodden Les Dennis improve slightly as he squashed his new lady’s doubts. The day’s biggest audience tuned in to see Dennis’ Michael get one over on demon spawn David Platt, securing 5.9 million viewers and a 29% share.
Elsewhere in the 8pm slot, George Clarke was poking around curious areas in his more relatable version of Grand Designs. George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces (Channel 4) saw the shiny faced architect meet two brothers who planned to turn a canal boat into a seriously impressive bachelor pad, resulting in the channel’s biggest hit of the day with over 1 million viewers and a 5% share.
In the 9pm slot, BBC Two delivered the second episode of its international thriller, The Honourable Woman. The high-profile drama featuring a cast of familiar faces led by Maggie Gyllenhaal fell from last week’s 2.1 million viewers to an audience of 1.5 million and an 8% share.
Over on ITV, 2.1 million viewers spent an hour at the British spa Champneys, the latest in a long line of docs looking at high-end retail/leisure experiences. It seems to be the remit of the country’s broadcasters to commission documentaries for any company with the words ‘luxury’ and’ institution’ in their carefully crafted blurb, with the latest plummy hour of telly netting an 11% share.
But it was BBC One’s Celebrity MasterChef that won over 9pm viewers with 3.9 million people tuning in for the latest scenes of ex-EastEnders stars competitively cooking, resulting in a 20% share.
Over on Channel 4, the new series of Embarrassing Bodies (9pm) continued to take the gross-viewers-out factor to a whole new level. Exactly 1 million viewers tuned in to see Dr Christian meet a man with a wobbly willy while Dr Pixie (really) met a woman allergic to sperm. The gawk show secured a 5% share.
Later on BBC One, the latest Question Time (10:30pm) got the nation chatting and was the most talked about TV show on Twitter. An audience of 2.6 million joined in on the touchy subject of Scottish independence, netting a 22% 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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