TV Overnights: BBC One’s Eastenders outshines the football once again

BBC One’s hour-long Eastenders episode took the limelight away from ITV1’s World Cup 2010 coverage once again last night.

The soap attracted a high of more than 7.3 million viewers and a 34.1% average audience share between 7pm and 8pm, finishing off BBC One’s peak ratings run.

The channel banked the highest ratings throughout most of its day-time schedule with live coverage of the third day’s play at Wimbledon and the all-important Match of the Day Live: England v Slovenia game.

The final Group C match, which saw England scrape through to the next stage after a 1-0 win, pulled in more than 14 million peak viewers and an impressive 63.3% average audience share between 2.15pm and 5.30pm.

However, ITV1 stole the peak audience from 8pm onwards with its coverage of the remaining Group D match between Ghana and Germany.  The game picked up over 6.5 million peak viewers and a 23.3% average audience share between 7pm and 9.30pm.

Elsewhere, BBC One’s Inspector Lynley Mysteries attracted 3 million average viewers between 8pm and 9.30pm, while BBC Two’s Tribal Wives pulled in 1.5 million viewers and Five’s NCIS picked up 1.4 million viewers during the 9pm to 10pm peak-hour.

At the same time, Channel 4’s last ever Big Brother series continued with 2.3 million peak viewers and a 9.4% 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.