Overnights: The Open hits a high of 5.3m viewers

BBC One’s Live Golf coverage dominated the ratings yesterday, peaking with a high of more than 5.3 million viewers.

Around 3.3 million average viewers tuned in to watch The Open Championship, securing BBC One with a impressive 24.2% audience share between 12.50pm and 7.30pm.

American Stewart Cink triumphed over his rival Tom Watson by six shots in a play-off after the two had both finished the tournament two under.

Later on in the evening, BBC Two’s Top Gear banked the pre-prime time slot with a high of almost 7 million viewers and a 26.8% average audience share.

ITV1’s Taggart secured the highest ratings during the 9pm-10pm peak hour though with 4.3 million average viewers and a 19% share.

Saturday night’s ratings saw BBC One retain its standard peak-run with Total Wipeout, The National Lottery and its long-running hospital drama Casualty, which peaked with more than 5.2 million viewers.

On Friday, ITV1 secured the top spot with Coronation Street‘s high of 8.4 million viewers, followed by the penultimate Doc Martin, which attracted 4.1 million peak viewers and a 18.5% average share during the 9pm to 10pm peak slot.

Meanwhile, Channel 4’s attempt to revive the ratings for its latest Big Brother series seems to have worked. The first episode on Friday night pulled in over 2.6 million viewers, while the second picked up 3 million peak viewers, it’s highest ratings so far.

Five new housemates entered the Big Brother house on Friday, one of whom is Karly’s extremely wealthy other half. Channel 4 hopes the five newcomers – Tom, Kenneth, Hira, Bea and David – will drum up some interest and in turn increase ratings for the low-key series.

Channel 4’s ploy appeared to work on Friday evening, but ratings slipped to 1.5 million average viewers on Saturday evening, before going up to an average of 2.1 million on Sunday.

Before Friday, Series 10 of the fly-on-the-wall programme had only hit the 2 million (average adults) viewers mark seven times since it started on June 4, which is substantially lower than last year’s average ratings.

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.