Arsenal’s FA Cup glory peaks at 9.2m viewers on ITV
With the unseasonably beautiful Spring weather descending over the country at the weekend, it was a good job that the TV schedule held enough clout to keep those pasty sunshine-starved viewers from wandering away from their screens.
Saturday afternoon brought a sense of occasion for many football fans across the UK as the final of the 133rd season of the FA Cup wrapped up as many were basking in the sunshine.
An average audience of 5.4 million viewers (a 41% share) tuned in for the entire coverage of the FA Cup Final Live (ITV), which started at 3pm. As usual, chit chat duties fell to yin and yang presenters, the Buddha-faced Adrian Chiles and the perma-scowled Roy Keane, each representing the extreme side of their positive and negative nature.
The actual game between first time finalist Hull and proven champions Arsenal didn’t kick off until an entire two hours later at 5pm, with the East Yorkshire team getting stuck in with two goals in under 8 minutes.
Naturally, this didn’t last and the ensuing comeback from the gunners brought in a peak of 9.2 million viewers and a 49% share as Arsenal beat Hull in the 109th minute.
All this led straight into scenes of desperate fame hungry hordes running the crude and gaudy gauntlet of Britain’s Got Talent (ITV, 8:15pm) in order to provide some tea time fun for the masses.
This week, a 15 stone pole dancer from Derby helped bring in an audience of 8.6 million viewers and a 41% share, proving that Cowell’s talent-vacuum soap is more powerful than the sun.
Over on BBC One, Casualty‘s numbers were looking at bit unhealthy. Only 3.3 million viewers tuned in for the usually strong performer, netting a 15% share.
Channel 4 dedicated their Saturday schedule to some mutant fun and some heavy sprinkles of cross promotion as X-Men: First Class (9pm) became more of an extended press junket for the new film than a screening of 2011 franchise reboot.
Peppered with interviews of the cast acting all personal and matey with the camera, 2 million viewers managed to pay attention to the film between the adverts, resulting in a 12% share and the channel’s biggest audience of the weekend.
At the same time of ITV there were some more exceptional human beings in Amazing Greys (9pm) – old people who could amazingly answer general knowledge questions. 2.2 million joined in with the pandering quiz show, netting a 12% share.
There was a complete change of pace on Sunday as a long-time favourite went and insured itself against the heat by taking an opportunist slant and cobbling together a seasonal-themed episode.
Looking to hog the glory of the weather by riding on the coattails of the sunshine, Countryfile Spring Special (BBC One, 7pm) saw all your favourite presenters look slightly more energetic than usual as they sang the praises of the Sun God and sacrificed an innocent to ensure a productive harvest.
No, not really – instead Ellis and Matt looked at some birds in an excitable fashion while Adam investigated April showers with a weatherman friend.
The Sunday mainstay brought in the biggest audience of the day, netting 5.6 million viewers and a 31% share.
Even less exciting was the fact that yesterday’s BBC News (BBC One, 10pm) secured Sunday’s second biggest audience, with 5.5 million viewers and a 31% share tuning in.
A little earlier, the two hours of back slapping and self-congratulation that is The British Academy Television Awards (BBC One, 8pm) was watched by 5.1 million viewers and generated 107,470 tweets – the most tweeted about show of the day.
Elsewhere, ITV gave over their evening to kooky lady copper Vera (8pm) with the latest two hour case bringing in 5 million viewers and a 23% share.
On Channel 4 at 9pm, Fargo continued its successful and short run, with another 1 million viewers catching up with the devious small-town happenings, resulting to a 5% share.
At the same time on BBC Two, the last few weeks of poet Dylan Thomas’ life were examined in a drama about one last hooray in New York in 1953. Dylan Thomas: A Poet in New York saw Tom Hollander have a field day as the drunken sickly poet, but only managed to secure an audience of 611,000 viewers and a 3% share.
The Social TV Analytics report is a daily leaderboard displaying the latest social TV analytics Twitter data from SecondSync. The table shows the top UK TV shows as they are mentioned on Twitter, which MediaTel has correlated with the BARB overnight programme ratings for those shows (only viewable to BARB subscribers).
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. Overnight data supplied by TRP are based on 15 minute slot averages. This may differ from tape checked figures, which are based on a programme’s actual start and end time.
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