Series 12 of The Great British Bake Off returned to screens with a 31% audience share last night, with Channel 4 claiming it was the programme’s most successful draw with younger viewers to date.
According to BARB overnight figures, the five-minute peak for last night’s opening episode was 6.0 million viewers at 8.30pm, halfway through the scheduled programming.
The same figures showed the 15-minute peak occurred between 8.45pm and 9pm at 5.5 million viewers.
The show was the most watched on TV last night with an overall share of all TV audience viewing peaking at 30.8% around the same time and on average the show had 28.5% audience share.
On Channel 4+1 the audience had a 5-minute peak of 5.1 million viewers at 9.35pm.
Last year’s series had an average consolidated audience of 10.4 million and had the most successful final episode with 9.2 million viewers since the show moved to Channel 4 from the BBC in 2017.
Channel 4 reported last night’s episode was the highest rating commission it had so far this year and averaged 5.7 million viewers with a 30.8% share of the viewing audience, making it the show’s second biggest ever launch to date for share of audience
It noted that it was the biggest ever GBBO launch for share of young viewers with their figures putting this at 61.9%.
Channel 4 numbers put the audience peak at 6.5 million and a 36.6% audience share.
Comedian Matt Lucas replaced Sandi Toksvig as presenter, joining Noel Fielding and judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith for this series.
German supermarket giant Aldi signed a deal with Channel 4 earlier this year to be the exclusive broadcast sponsor of the show for a second year running.
Tom, 28, a software developer from Kent was the first contestant to leave the tent (pictured above- credit Channel 4 press).
