With anticipation levels building to fever pitch around the country, Thursday night finally saw the FIFA World Cup 2014 (ITV, 7pm) kick off in style as hosts Brazil faced off against Croatia, but not before viewers were treated to a typically garish and high energy opening ceremony.
Starting a full two hours before the game actually kicked off, it was clear no expense was spared as Jennifer Lopez and something called Pitbull burst out of a giant LED ball. In a further treat for viewers, there were serious issues with the sound quality, sparing many souls across the planet of the forced collaboration.
The four hour event pulled in an average audience of 8.1 million viewers, with just over 2 million of these enjoying the opening celebration and the intense game in HD. Naturally, viewer interest peaked during the actual game, reaching an impressive 12.5 million viewers half an hour after kick off, right about the time Neymar scored the first of Brazil’s three winning goals.
Elsewhere, and outside of the realm of football, TV’s other big event of the night, EastEnders (BBC One, 7:30pm) managed a surprisingly large audience despite all the hoopla on the other side.
Due to a variety of scheduling conflicts EastEnders has taken a beating in the last few weeks, despite a rejuvenated track record for most of 2014.
Last night’s visit to Walford was watched by 4.9 million viewers, much lower than normal but impressive given the circumstances. Scenes of Max Branning continuing to work his weasely magic netted a 26% share and the second biggest audience of the day.
BBC One’s anti- world cup tactics continued in the form of an extended edition of Celebrity MasterChef at 8:30pm. 3.5 million viewers tuned in for the star studded event, with the likes of Andi Peters helping bring in a 16% share.
Afterwards, another repeat of Mrs Brown’s Boys (BBC One, 9:30pm) secured 2.8 million viewers and a 12% share.
Over on Channel 4, George Clarke was busy poking around more strangers’ amazing spaces at 8pm. An audience of just over 1 million viewers tuned in for the second episode of George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces, resulting in a 5% share.
Afterwards, the broadcaster was back in dodgy territory with a one-off documentary that had the magic word ‘benefits’ in the title. Britain’s Benefit Tenants (9pm) captured the attention of 1.3 million football dodgers, netting a 5% 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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