TV Overnights: Silent Witness tops 7m viewers

BBC One’s Silent Witness dominated the peak-hour ratings last night with a high of more than seven million viewers.

The popular crime drama secured a 27.3% average audience share during the all-important 9pm to 10pm slot, easily seeing off competition from ITV1’s The Biggest Loser and Channel 4’s One Born Every Minute.

The second episode of The Biggest Loser, a reality show hosted by Davina McCall, attracted a much lower average audience of 3.6 million viewers and a 14% share for ITV1, while the fly-on-the-wall documentary One Born Every Minute banked 2.2 million viewers and a 8.8% share for Channel 4.

At the same time, BBC Two’s Horizon: What is Reality? picked up 1.8 million average viewers and a 7.1% share.

Over on Channel 5, the 9pm action thriller film Eraser, starring Arnie and James Caan, secured 1.2 million viewers and a 6.2% average share.

Earlier on in the evening, the soaps shared the pre-watershed ratings. ITV1’s Coronation Street won the highest audience of the night (10.4 million viewers), though BBC One’s Eastenders came a close second with 9.9 million viewers.

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.