TV Overnights: ITV1’s Britain’s Got Talent hits a high of more than 10m viewers

ITV1’s Britain’s Got Talent continued to dominate the Saturday night ratings with a high of more than 10 million viewers this weekend.

The hour-long show easily secured the top-spot during the 8pm to 9pm pre-watershed slot with 9.5 million average viewers and a 42.9% audience share, which put it well ahead of its rival terrestrial channels.

ITV1’s FA Cup Final football coverage also hit a high of more than 6.4 million viewers during the Saturday afternoon slot.  The Chelsea v Portsmouth match, which ended 1-0 to Chelsea, banked the peak audience share from 2pm to 5.30pm.

However, aside from ITV1’s two triumphs, BBC One held the peak audience for the majority of Saturday’s line-up.  The channel’s Formula 1: The Monaco Grand Prix qualifying coverage, Total Wipeout: The Final, Doctor Who, Over the Rainbow, Casualty and Live at the Apollo all picked up the peak share.

It was a similar story on Sunday – BBC One secured the highest ratings for the most of the day, with the exception of a few slots.  ITV1 managed to steal the peak share on three occasions – for The Big Fight: Amir Khan, the Britain’s Got Talent repeat and its Sunday evening drama Lewis, which attracted over 6.1 million average viewers and a 25% audience share between 8pm and 10pm.

Over on BBC One, the Sunday morning politics shows proved popular following the events at Number 10 last week, as did the channel’s Monaco Grand Prix Live coverage, which peaked with 5.7 million viewers.  The all-new Halcyon River Diaries, meanwhile, picked up a high of 4.7 million viewers, before Countryfile pulled in over 5.9 million viewers.

On Friday evening, the soaps dominated the pre-watershed line-up.  BBC One’s Eastenders attracted more than 8 million peak viewers, while ITV1’s Coronation Street hit a high of 7.7 million.

However, BBC One managed to steal the all-important peak-hour ratings with Ashes to Ashes, which pulled in more than 5 million viewers and a 22.1% average audience 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.