BBC News scores high on a weekend of TV abandonment
The past weekend saw more and more people across the UK turn their backs on their once-beloved TV sets to, presumably, escape into the increasingly impressive British summer.
Following on from the post-FIFA World Cup 2014 audience slump, the Commonwealth Games 2014 did its best to keep potential viewers glued to their sofas, safely hidden from the outside world. Unfortunately for the television landscape, the Glasgow-set tournament could barely compete with the lure of the outdoors.
Saturday brought a fourth consecutive day of blanket coverage from BBC One, with the sporting action kicking off at 9am as usual.
The first two segments at 9am and 12:15pm brought in average audiences of 1.3 million and 1.9 million viewers, respectively, but it was the three-hour coverage of the swimming finals at 7pm that resulted in the most popular spot of the day, resulting in just over 3 million viewers and a 20% share.
Elsewhere the other main channels were scrambling to provide a bit more colour to the evening with ITV and Channel 4 rolling out some ‘old’ favourites.
For the second week in a row ITV continued to pump out the often-repeated Star Wars prequel trilogy, masquerading as fitting Saturday night prime time fayre. 8:30pm brought the return of dead-eyed stars Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman as they spent 2.5 hours interacting with green screen creations with fading enthusiasm.
Not as childhood-destroying and traumatising as Episode I or as mildly acceptable as Episode III, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (ITV, 8pm) did feature significantly less Jar Jar and pulled in 1.4 million viewers and a 9% share.
Sticking to the sci-fi theme over on Channel 4 was Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s love letter to geekdom in comedy Paul (9pm). An audience of 1.3 million viewers tuned in to see a foul mouthed alien join the two losers on an American road trip, resulting in an 8% share.
But, tellingly, it wasn’t a much hyped sporting event of the premiere of a Hollywood blockbuster that proved to be the day’s biggest hit – that glory all belonged to BBC News (BBC One).
The latest developments in Gaza and the Ukraine has kept viewers tuning in for updates and analysis.
The 7:30pm edition was watched by 3.1 million viewers, resulting in the day’s second biggest hot. The number one spot was taken by the 10:15pm BBC News, which saw 3.4 million viewers return for the latest updates, translating to a 21% share.
You know it’s a slow day when 1996 ‘thrill ride’ Twister (ITV, 4:30pm) makes it into Saturday’s top 25 programmes with 673,000 viewers.
While Sunday was technically a brand new day, viewers would have been forgiven if they thought it was the previous day on repeat.
BBC One once again provided a torrent of Commonwealth Games 2014 but kindly sprinkled in a bit of Formula 1: The Hungarian Grand Prix Highlights (5:10pm) to help the easily confused distinguish between days.
5:10pm saw Suzi Perry presented the automotive excitement from the 11th round of the season, securing 3.2 million viewers and a 22% share.
Coverage of the games peaked at 7:10pm as Gary Lineker presented the men’s 50m breaststroke and 100m butterfly among other events, with an average audience of 3.5 million tuning in.
But once again the world events aired on BBC News (10:15pm) secured not only the day’s biggest audience, but the entire weekend’s, netting over 4 million viewers and a 22% share.
ITV attempted to counteract all the sport and news with another repeat of period spy drama Foyle’s War at 8pm. The two-hour affair brought in 2.3 million viewers and an 11% share, which was itself outshined by a repeat of ‘nu’ Catchphrase, which secured 2.5 million viewers at 7:30pm.
Just to make the weekend feel slightly more desolate (from an audience perspective) than it already was, Channel 4 rolled out the second episode of The Mill‘s (8pm) second series, a show surely better suited to the dank dark depths of winter.
An audience of 1.6 million viewers tuned in to see a bunch of grim northerners toiling away in the darkness while the southerners lorded it up as usual – so kind of like Game of Thrones without the dragons, dire wolves or naughty bits. The second slice of historical labour netted an 8% share.
Over on Channel 5, Big Brother managed to attract over 1 million viewers, up from Saturday’s audience of 806,000. The latest histrionics from the mentally troubled provided Northern & Shell with the biggest audience of the weekend.
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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