Britain’s Got Talent peaks with 12.8m viewers
Britain’s Got Talent peaked on Saturday night with a high of 12.8 million viewers and an impressive 52.3% average audience share between 8pm and 9pm.
Around 12.2 million average viewers tuned in for the third audition show, hosted by Ant and Dec, which saw more acts perform to judges Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and Amanda Holden – securing ITV1 with the highest ratings all weekend.
ITV1’s on-going Hell’s Kitchen series also peaked on Saturday evening with more than 4.7 million viewers and a 20.8% average audience share between 9pm and 10pm.
However, BBC One managed to steal the show earlier on in the day with a peak run of the World Snooker Championship, Final Score, My Family and Robin Hood – peaking with almost 4 million viewers in the last 15 minutes of Robin Hood.
On Sunday, BBC One also banked the peak audience during the all-important evening slot with its coverage of the British Academy Television Awards.
More than 4.7 million peak viewers tuned in to see Graham Norton host the ceremony from the Royal Festival Hall in London, securing BBC One with an 18% average audience share between 8pm and 10pm.
The channel also out-performed its terrestrial rivals on Friday evening with all-new Have I Got News For You and Reggie Perrin, followed by BBC News and Ten and the ever-popular Friday Night with Jonathan Ross chat show.
The first come-back episode of the long-running current affairs quiz programme with Paul Merton and Ian Hislop pulled in 5.9 million peak viewers and a 24.9% share between 9pm and 9.30pm.
BBC One’s remake of the 1970s sitcom The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, starring Martin Clunes, followed with over 5.1 million peak viewers and a 22.2% share between 9.30pm and 10pm.
However, the soaps managed to attract the overall highest ratings on Friday evening – BBC One’s Eastenders peaked with 7.8 million viewers, while ITV1’s Coronation Street pulled in a high of 8 million.
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.