BRIT Awards tribute night to Adele up just 3% on last year
Wednesday brought another evening of pageantry, celebrity, glamour and award-dispensing to ITV’s screens, with The BRIT Awards 2016 (8pm) providing another few hours of musical distractions for the masses.
While the ceremony didn’t manage to secure the biggest audience share across its two hour and 20 minute broadcast, it did manage to win over the biggest crowd from 9pm onwards, once its biggest BBC rival was done and dusted.
For the second year in a row, diminutive BFFs Ant and Dec were on hand to link together over-familiar scenes of Adele hugging awards, which was also broken up by performances from Justin Bieber, Coldplay and Girls Aloud tribute act Little Mix.
Elsewhere, New Zealand teenage poppet Lorde had the thankless task of tackling a Bowie tribute which saw this year’s parade of self-promotion up 2.8% on last year.
An average audience of 5.5 million viewers tuned in to see Totally Normal Person Just Like You and Me ™ Adele, bestowed hundreds of shiny trinkets, all the while the audible noise of the music industry’s creaky wheels continued to slowly turn, pinning all its hope on those increasingly rare mega-selling stars with the entire broadcast securing a 26% share.
Of course, the international celebrity carnival topped the TV Twitter chart but also managed another two BRIT-related entries with the essential viewing of ITV2’s The Brit Awards 2016: Red Carpet (7pm) and The Brit Awards 2016: Afterparty (10:20pm) netting 331,000 and 256,000 viewers, respectively.
BBC One secured the 8pm slot with the fourth and final episode of The Great Sport Relief Bake Off seeing another four celebrities tackle Paul and Mary’s judgement with very mixed results.
Perhaps it was due to the noisy and distracting awards ceremony on the other side, or maybe due to the fact the British public is finally getting sick of the format, but yesterday’s finale was down -16% on last year’s charity climax.
In total, 5.4 million viewers tuned in to learn that Will Young is fairly crap at baking, while comedian Morgana Robinson insisted on behaving like that precocious young girl from Outnumbered, for some reason.
The light-hearted completion saw Mr Jennifer Saunders, Ade Edmondson, crowned star baker (there are actually no outright winners in these specials because charity), netting a 25% audience share for BBC One.
Afterwards was the third and final instalment of actually-nothing-like-Tomorrow’s–World science show Tomorrow’s Food (BBC One, 9pm). 2.3 million viewers tuned in to be horrified by burgers grown from stem cells, human breast milk-spurting genetically modified goats and mushroom-treated chocolate, resulting in an 11% share.
Over on BBC Two £100k House: Tricks of the Trade bagged 1.3 million viewers and a 6% share at 8pm while Chinese American drama One Child continued at 9pm with 823,000 viewers and a 4% share.
There was some structured reality on offer over on Channel 4 with the latest suspect developments in Posh Pawn which secured 820,000 viewers and a 4% share, while the real-life horror of 24 Hours in A&E was watched by 1.5 million viewers and a 7% share at 9pm.
[advert position=”left”]Meanwhile, Channel 5 spent its evening sticking its nose where it didn’t belong, with GPs: Behind Closed Doors netting 1 million viewers and a 5% share at 8pm, followed by Inside Buckingham Palace at 9pm which brought in 1.4 million viewers and a 7% share.
Despite all the hoopla, backslapping and sparkly dresses, it was the grim realness of ITV’s soaps that took Wednesday’s top two spots.
6.2 million viewers tuned in at 7pm for another bleak trip to Emmerdale, netting a 31% share, while Coronation Street saw Izzy attempt to score some jazz cigarettes in that other dodgy pub, resulting in 6.8 million viewers and a 33% share.
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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