TV Overnights: ITV1 maintains Thursday night ratings lead thanks to soaps

ITV1’s soap opera dominated line up easily won last night’s peak time ratings battle with BBC1, despite Eastenders pulling in the highest viewing figure of the day.

The first visit of the night to Emmerdale, which saw Ryan Lamb stand trial for his father’s murder, was watched by an average audience of 6.2 million. The second episode, featuring Ryan’s half brother Nathan taking to the stand to give evidence, then pulled in a greater audience figure of 6.8 million.

In between those two episodes Eastenders, still focussing on Carol Jackson’s grief over her son Billie’s death, held sway with 8.2 million people and achieved a viewing share of 37.7%.

The final soap of the night, Coronation Street, pulled in an average audience of 7.6 million (which peaked at 7.7 million for the final 15 minutes of the programme).

Law & Order: UK pulled in 4.4 million viewers, less than 4.6 million who tuned into Have I Got News For You but comfortably ahead of 2.8 million watching Reggie Perrin.

Last night’s Europa League action pulled in 788,000 viewers for ITV4’s coverage of Liverpool’s away match with Napoli, whilst Channel Five’s coverage of Manchester City’s match with Lech Poznan was watched by 1.8 million people.

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.