Night of slaughter on The Apprentice nabs 5.9m on BBC One
The tenth series of BBC One’s long-running and lucrative competitive-cretin show The Apprentice (9pm) secured the 9pm slot last night, although last night’s backstabbing antics yielded the lowest audience yet.
The fourth episode in the current run saw Lord Alan of the house Sugar task his desperate to please minions with creating some ‘hip’ new online video content, in order to grab all that sweet, sweet advertising revenue.
Featuring a cast of thousands, the tenth run of the perennially popular series has seen many hopeful apprentices receive Sugar’s special finger of abrupt termination with yesterday’s episode seeing a record amount of blood and ego spilled.
Last night’s slice of professional embarrassment saw all three anxious oxygen thieves receive the boot after a particularly humiliating boardroom squabble.
The Apprentice opened with 6.7 million viewers a few weeks back and the tenth series has settled around the 6 million mark since.
Yesterday, 5.9 million viewers (a 26% share) watched between their fingers as one particular sacked candidate doing her best to make sure she bagged the cringiest exit ever due to her unmitigated grovelling.
At the same time on ITV, it was time for the adventures of Manchester’s most dysfunctional dynamic duo to come to a close as Scott & Bailey‘s (9pm) professional and personal problems continued to mount.
Not content on dealing with a boozy senior officer, typically useless men and the discovery of a slave farm, DC Janet Bailey found herself under internal investigation after murdering a man the previous week.
Perhaps it’s due to viewer’s fatigue of all things police procedural but the critically popular show has seen a fall in audience of late, with the fourth series falling foul to ‘catch up’ attitudes.
4.2 million viewers (a 19% share) caught up with the final episode, written by Scott & Bailey‘s drunken detective chief inspector herself, actress Amelia Bullmore.
This was at least an improvement on the opening episode back in early September (4 million) but was nowhere near series three’s début in April 2013 with 5.8 million viewers.
Channel 4 brought the penultimate episode of Grand Designs‘ fourteenth series and featured buzzwords such as ‘Welsh’, ‘Japanese’ and ‘fusion’ – enough to make Kevin share his ‘pained despair’ face.
1.2 million viewers tuned in to discover it was one of those ‘revisited’ episodes, guaranteeing a view of the finished product and netting a 5% share.
That audience wasn’t quite as strong as Channel 5’s poverty exploitation documentary Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away (9pm) which managed 1.5 million viewers and a 6% share.
Earlier on BBC One, the final ever series of the once-mighty Waterloo Road (8pm) saw its audience dwindle to 2.7 million viewers and a 13% share.
Which certainly wasn’t enough to beat the commercial-minded emotionally- cathartic show, Surprise Surprise (ITV, 8pm), which saw Holly Willoughby solve everyday people’s traumatic problems with some branded goods.
3.6 million viewers tuned in for the new iteration featuring a deluge of marketing opportunities amongst all the tears and tragic stories, resulting in an 18% share.
On BBC Two, those nice people on Autumnwatch 2014 (8pm) managed to secure the exact same audience as the first episode on Tuesday, with 2.6 million viewers and a 13% share tuning in while The Supervet (8pm) on Channel 4 attempted to rebuild a seriously unfortunate cat which used up at least four of its nine lives, netting 1.5 million viewers and a 7% share.
The top two shows of the day belonged to ITV as they rolled out single episodes of their two soaps from 7pm. There was more dependable teatime violence from Emmerdale as Moira beat up an intruder in her home, securing 6.3 million viewers and a 33% share.
There were wedding bells ringing in Weatherfield at 7:30pm as more disastrous Coronation Street nuptials got underway. 7.5 million viewers tuned in to see former calculating murderer Tracey Barlow duped into marrying another crazed killer, Rob resulting in a 37% share.
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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