TV Overnights: Late night news ratings up as riots strike the capital

Last night, the BBCs news viewing figures for coverage of the ‘London riots’ rivalled the prime time slots on both BBC One and ITV.

The 10 o’clock showing of the BBC‘s flagship news show attracted an average audience of 7.1 million viewers. This figure rivalled both showings of Coronation Street on ITV1 (7.7 and 7.5 million respectively) and was less than 1 million fewer views than BBC One‘s New Tricks, which was shown in the channel’s prime time slot.

ITV‘s ten o’clock news slot also experienced a significant boost from the same day last week (1.6 to 2.3 million this week), demonstrating the significance of the disturbances that directly affected much of London and eventually spread to Northern cities like Birmingham and Leeds.

Almost all news programs experienced a boost of at least a million viewers at some point during the day.

The overall most viewed program on Monday was BBC One‘s New Tricks with an audience of 8.1 million and had a 32% share of the ratings. It is notable that the aforementioned BBC News at Ten equalled this share in the later time slot.

University Challenge gained the most viewers for BBC Two with an audience of 2.4 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.