TV Overnights: Sky News gets 2.1m viewers for second election debate

The second election debate on Sky News last night pulled in an average of 2.1 million viewers, an 8.7% share of the entire television audience.

The debate, live on Sky News from 8pm to 9.30pm, was also shown on the BBC News Channel and Sky 3 at the same time.

It picked up an average of 1.4 million viewers on the BBC News Channel (a 5.6% share) and 586,000 (2.4%) on Sky 3.

The debate was also shown on BBC Two at 11.30pm, where the audience averaged 310,000 viewers (6.6%).

Away from the debate, it was a good night for BBC One, with its comedy double-whammy of Have I Got News For You and Outnumbered in the 9pm hour coming out on top in the ratings war.

In the half hour to 9.30pm, topical news quiz Have I Got News For You had an average of 4.3 million viewers (17.6%), peaking at 4.6 million.

Following straight after, Outnumbered grabbed 5.1 million viewers (20.8%), peaking at 5.3 million.

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.