Emmerdale death plot results in another EastEnders defeat
After Wednesday night’s garish opening ceremony, Thursday saw the Commonwealth Games 2014 finally get underway with almost the entirety of BBC One’s output dedicated to the multi-sport event.
Broken up throughout the day by the channel’s usual news programming, thirteen hours of coverage kicked off at 9am. Although only an average audience of just 1.1 million viewers tuned in for the first three hour segment, interest grew throughout the day.
The concluding stages of the men’s and women’s triathlon secured over 2 million viewers at 3pm, while Gary Lineker’s coverage of the swimming finals at 7pm saw viewers jump up to 3.6 million at 7pm.
BBC Two also dabbled in a spot of Glasgow-based broadcasting throughout the day, mainly covering BBC One’s frequent news breaks. Out of the much smaller slots, only the 6pm coverage of the track cycling managed to interest a significant audience, with 1.3 million viewers and a 10% share tuning in.
In the midst of the entire patriotic binge-watching on the other side(s), ITV’s best hope of the evening came in the form of a double trip to the tumultuous, yet picturesque, village of Emmerdale.
Thursday’s slice of rural ideal saw yet another murder attempt go down as young bespectacled Finn Barton made the mistake of trusting a brand new random character.
4.6 million viewers tuned in to see an unconscious Finn end up in a carbon monoxide-filled barn, proving that the Yorkshire Dales is a much more dangerous place than the depressing borough of Walford and netting a 29% share.
Unusually, the return trip at 8pm actually saw a rise in popularity as 4.7 million viewers watched as Finn’s body was found just in the nick of time, although the audience share fell to 27%.
Slotted in between over on BBC Two was the aforementioned miserableness of EastEnders (7:30pm) which saw Sharon Watts Mitchell Rickman’s miserable existence continue.
Having shaken a heavy addiction to happy pills and recovering from a mini coma, Thursday night’s trip to E20 saw the East End entrepreneur discover that her beloved Phil Mitchell was actually responsible for her attack.
A lowly audience of 3.9 million viewers tuned in to see things go from bad to worse for the house-bound platinum blond, resulting in a 24% share. While the channel change surely didn’t help the soap’s chances, this summer has seen EastEnders‘ audience noticeably affected.
Over on Channel 4, George Clarke was busy launching a new three-part series just a week after his main show wrapped up. Amazing Spaces Shed of the Year (8pm) saw the charismatic architect poke around strangers’ most intimate areas in an effort to find out what was the best fit.
1.6 million viewers, Channel 4’s biggest hit of the day, explored a number of extremely eccentric small builds, resulting in a 9% share.
At 9pm, BBC Two aired the fourth part of critically acclaimed political thriller The Honourable Woman, starring Lindsay Duncan and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
1.5 million viewers watched as the action jumped back eight years to Gaza, filling the audience in on some very important information and resulting in an 8% share.
At the same time on ITV was the latest in a long line of questionable and slightly patronising documentaries about eccentric salt-of-the-earth-type folk. Diamond Geezers and Gold Dealer (9pm), a documentary that managed to make real people look like cartoon characters, secured 2.4 million viewers and a 12% share.
On Channel 4, it was time to point, stare and gawp at real people’s Embarrassing Bodies at 9pm. This week the ‘educational’ fun warned about the dangers of drinking and smoking while showcasing a patient with a cavernous hole in their backside, which helped net an audience of 1.1 million viewers and a 6% share.
If the sight of Doctors Christian and Pixie poking around a pre-op transgender patient’s private bits was a bit too tasteful for your palate, Channel 5 was on hand to lower the tone even further.
9pm brought the return of Autopsy: The Last Hours of… , a show that smack of class from head to toe and probably peaked last series when it showed a re-enactment of Whitney Houston boiling to death in a bath.
The lucky ghost to be chosen for last night’s ‘dramatic reconstruction’ was Michael Hutchence, a man who… well, he was in INXS. 1.2 million viewers went along for the ride, resulting a in 6% share and Channel 5’s biggest hit of the day.
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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