TV Overnights: Corries drags in 7.5m viewers

Soaps and football dominated Thursday night’s TV schedule with Coronation Street attracting the biggest audience on ITV1. 7.5 million people tuned in to see the latest drama on the most eventful street in the North. Viewer attention peaked in the last fifteen minutes as the nation watched Carla drag that Barlow child out of the playground, resulting in a 29% audience share.

The first episode of Emmerdale kicked off at 7pm on ITV1 with a 33% audience share. Concern over Zak Dingle’s whereabouts pulled in 7 million viewers.

Hiding away between the double whammy of rural action was EastEnders over on BBC One at 7:30pm. 31.6% of the available audience watched as Derek’s plotting against Roxy stepped up a gear. This episode captured an average of 7 million viewers during the half an hour slot, resulting in BBC One’s largest audience of the day.

Channel 5’s coverage of Europa League Football kicked off at 7:30pm live from Old Trafford. An average audience of 3.3 million viewers watched Manchester United lose 1-2 to Ajax, peaking at 4.4 million (an 18.4% share) at the beginning of the second half.

At 8pm over on ITV1 the hunt for Zak continued in Emmerdale but failed to bring back the same amount of viewers. The second episode of the night generated slightly lower interest with an audience of 6.8 million (a 28.8% share).
At 9pm over on BBC one the final episode of heist drama Inside Men improved upon last week’s ratings with 3.5 million people tuning in to see how the plan played out.

The last episode in the current series of Location, Location, Location provided Channel 4’s biggest draw of the day. An average of 1.5 million people watched Kirstie and Phil rehash old clips by catching up with couples from a previous series.

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.