Bake Off’s big move to BBC One proves a rousing success
After four long years of been hidden away in the nether regions of BBC Two, Wednesday night not only saw the return of The Great British Bake Off (8pm) but also marked the show’s move to the glorious prime time heights of BBC One.
A shining beacon in the sea of reruns and sporting events that make up the summer silly season, last night’s opening episode saw the return of Mel & Sue ™ and Mary & Paul ™ as they were joined by a whole new cast of masochistic contenders.
Series five kicked off in the usual fashion; with a sprinkle of nervous bumbling, a wallop of innuendo and a liberal helping of plinkity music set to the HD backdrop of sunny Berkshire, resulting in the usual winning recipe despite the channel shift.
In fact, it seems as if the carefully calculated move went exactly to plan, with the show doing much better than series four’s opening audience of 5.6 million back in August 2013.
A hugely impressive 7.2 million viewers tuned in to The Great British Bake Off last night to see the twelve new (interesting and varied) faces getting to grips with the cursed Swiss roll, easily securing Wednesday’s biggest audience with a 35% share.
The show even did well on Twitter, becoming the most tweeted about programme of the day, generating 116,861 tweets during the broadcast.
Over on ITV, amidst the sound of the panic alarms being set off, the commercial broadcaster’s defensive barrier came in the form of Phillip Schofield, a man scientifically created in some dark basement of the London Television Centre to appeal to as broad an audience as possible.
The final episode of the sixth series of All Star Mr & Mrs (8pm) saw the ‘quiz’ show pick its contestants by filling its usual quota of a random Coronation Street star, another famous face from a less popular ITV property and a retired sport star, just for good measure.
2.8 million viewers tuned in to see the kind-of -familiar faces drag their other halves on national TV, securing a 14% share.
Over on Channel 4, property developer Sarah Beeny was busy bothering some more space-needy couples as they attempted to extend the size of their properties while being as thrifty as possible.
The third series of Double Your House for Half the Money (8pm) kicked off with a London couple who were running for the safety of the wilderness after the 2011 riots, bringing in a little over 1 million viewers and a 5% share.
At the same time on BBC Two, historian Dr Clare Jackson continued to make history come alive as she looked at the royal dynasty of The Stuarts, with the second look back at the past netting 1 million viewsers and a 5% share.
Later in the 9pm spot, things weren’t much more exciting. BBC One gave viewers a chance to see Clare Balding outside of a sporting arena as she fronted the first of three episodes in a series about jet-setting international veterinarians.
Operation Wild (9pm) saw International Rescue-type vets save elephants, gorillas and pandas from bullets and infections in a series of innovative operations. The magical mixture of animals and emotions was the biggest hit in the time slot, with 3.7 million viewers and a 19% share.
ITV was back behind bars in the prime time slot, this time liquidising the Who Do You Think You Are? format into more digestible, bite-sized pieces.
Following on from last year’s Secrets from the Workshouse, Secrets from the Clink (9pm) followed the familiar setup of famous people crying onto historical documents as a tragic narrative of an ancestor unfurled.
2.3 million viewers watched as Johnny Vegas learned about his jailbird, alcoholic distant grandmother, resulting in a 12% share.
Over on Channel 4, dependable performer One Born Every Minute (9m) popped out another decent audience with 1.5 million viewers and an 8% share catching up with the latest chorus of agonised screams.
Earlier in the evening, ITV had the soap market cornered with individual trips to both Emmerdale (7pm) and Coronation Street (7:30pm).
5.2 million viewers were on hand for the latest round of skulduggery and violence on Emmerdale, resulting in a 31% share.
Unusually for Coronation Street, ITV’s flagship drama had to make do with second place last night, with BBC One’s baking extravaganza overshadowing the long-running soap.
A little over 6 million viewers watched as Ken Barlow decided to take on the burden of solving the mystery surrounding Tina’s murder (hint – it’s that shifty looking guy, Rob, who radiates guilt in every frame he appears in) translating to a 33% 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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