Doc Martin pips past Crimewatch appeal while Corrie tops 9m
The first day in a fresh week of TV brought a new episode of Crimewatch (9pm) to BBC One and due to the unprecedented amount of media coverage, helped double its audience compared to recent efforts.
9pm saw the lovely Kirsty Young, crime solving former rugby player Martin Bayfield and professional protocol droid Matthew Amroliwala update the nation on the latest findings in the Madeleine McCann case. A whopping 6.7 million viewers tuned in to hear the minuscule but significant changes to the accepted timeframe, securing a 27% share.
This is a significant jump in popularity for the long running public appeal programme, up from 3.5 million viewers that each episode of Kirsty and her reconstructions managed to pull in on average this year.
Always happiest when putting pins in other people’s balloons, Doc Martin (ITV, 9pm) just had to come along and ruin the party. Discontented with the idea the population were huddling around their TV screens, collectively helping to solve a national fixation the good Doctor only went and put up an actual fight.
The general practitioner’s latest set of woes (somehow his wife just realised how awful he is) may not have attracted as many viewers compared to every other episode in this sixth series run, but last night’s helping of the doc’s branded scorpiness managed to hold its own against the earnest appeal of Crimewatch.
The penultimate episode of the crankathon was down nearly a million viewers compared to recent performances, with a total of 6.7 million viewers (a 28% share) tuning in to see his marriage fall apart. This beat BBC One’s heartfelt appeal by just 19,000 viewers.
Despite this, Twitter was abuzz about the fresh appeal, with Crimewatch accounting for the second biggest amount of TV activity. A total of 100,823 went out during the broadcast, generating around 2,142 tweets per minute.
Elsewhere in the prime time slot, Stephen Fry jetted about the globe, making an equal amount of friends and enemies as he attempted to get to the bottom of the extreme and varying attitudes towards homosexuality.
Only 865,000 people (a 4% share) watched Stephen Fry: Out There (BBC Two, 9pm) as he lounged about with Neil Patrick Harris and his dog in Hollywood before jetting off to Uganda to get into a nasty shouting match with the repulsive and ‘godly’ Minister for Ethics and Integrity.
At the same time on Channel 4 999: What’s Your Emergency decided to brighten up proceedings by focusing on fun drunk people. Just under 1 million viewers watched as ambulance staff across the country dealt with tears, concussions, blackouts and all out psychotic episodes brought on by the demon drink.
Meanwhile Channel 5 was enticing hatred with irresponsible documentary On Benefits & Proud (9pm), which says it all really. The broadcaster’s biggest audience of the day, 1.8 million viewers, tuned in for the sensationalist fun. Unsurprisingly, the show featured in the Social TV top ten, generating 307 tweets per minute during it’s broadcast.
Earlier on, at the dawn of the evening, soaps ruled over the schedule unabated. Emmerdale was first up at 7pm and it’s pretty much a pregone conclusion that the little village soap will be zipping past its BBC rival. A very impressive 7.5 million viewers views caught up with Cameron as he lurked anxiously about in the rain, resulting in a 36% share.
The first visit to Weatherfield was up straight afterwards, with Coronation Street (ITV) securing Monday’s biggest audience at 7:30pm with 9.1 million viewers.
This was nothing but bad news for the working class mockney folk of EastEnders (BBC One, 8pm) who also received Monday’s overall audience boost – just not enough to climb out of fourth place. 7.4 million people tuned in to view another claustrophobic and depressing party in Albert Square – this time in honour of toddler-grabber Roxy – resulting in a 31% share.
The second helping of Coronation Street retained a high percentage of its original audience at 8:30pm and easily secured the spot for Monday’s second favourite show. 8.8 million viewers watched as Liz McDonald strolled back into the Rovers and straight into a cat fight, resulting in a 35% 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.