Joseph Is The Word For Saturday Night Viewers
The final of campfest Any Dream Will Do easily won the ratings war on Saturday night for BBC One, proving that viewers are far from tired of the format.
The results programme, which saw Lee Mead rightfully win the coveted role of Joseph in the future West End production of Joseph And His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, attracted an average adult audience of 7.1 million between 10pm and 10.30pm – a 36% viewing share.
Earlier in the evening, the main show, which saw the return of all of the Josephs and the departure of third-placed Lewis Bradley, had 5.7 million adult viewers on average, equating to a 32.7% share of viewing.
Over on ITV1, the similarly formatted Grease Is The Word suffered in comparison, with only 3.4 million adult viewers (19.5%) tuning in to see Danny Bayne and Susan McFadden win the roles of the next Danny and Sandy.
This was only 646,000 more than watched the umpteenth repeat of the film version of Grease, which immediately preceded it.
ITV1 had better success with Simon Cowell’s new talent contest, Britain’s Got Talent. The show, which featured acts such as a rapping granny and a piano playing pig trying to win a £100,000 prize and a chance to appear on stage at the 2007 Royal Variety Performance, attracted a respectable 4.2 million adult viewers on average (21.4%).
This audience rose to 5.8 million (27%) for Sunday’s edition, comfortably beating BBC One drama The Chase, which had a total of 3.8 million (17.6%). ITV will be hoping that this level of performance continues, as the programme runs all week across the network.
BBC Two performed well between 8.30pm and 9.30pm on Sunday night, with the second episode of the new series of Coast attracting more than four million (18.7%) for the informative trip from Bournemouth to Plymouth.
Elsewhere on Sunday night, the new Max Beesley love triangle drama Talk To Me started off its four-part run on ITV1 with around four million viewers and an 18.7% share of viewing.
Meanwhile, David Dimbleby’s fascinating tour around the historical architecture of the UK in How We Built Britain lured more than 4.9 million adults on average to BBC One, winning the timeslot with a 23% audience share.
However, thanks to the time difference the F1: Canadian Grand Prix gave ITV1 some good early evening viewing figures. The incident packed race eventually won by British sensation Lewis Hamilton, had an average audience of around 4.3 million (with a peak audience of 6.6 million for the final 15 minutes of the race).
Channel 4’s Big Brother, which once again continues to court controversy (see Hundreds Rally Against C4’s Decision To Evict ‘Racist’ Housemate), drew in an average adult audience of around 3.5 million for both shows on Friday, whilst Sunday’s show recorded an average of more than 2.3 million (10.6%)
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, ITV2 and Sky One.
ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.com BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk