EastEnders and Breakfast anchor a strong day for BBC One
For ITV’s brand spanking new breakfast show, Good Morning Britain (6am), yesterday was the morning after the… eh, morning before, as the highly publicised programme woke up to some disheartening news.
After months of preparation, talent-poaching and extreme polishing of the new outlandish mega-desk of authority, the launch of Good Morning Britain failed to overshadow its rival show, bringing in just 768,000 viewers, compared to BBC Breakfast‘s sturdy audience of 1.5 million.
Yesterday brought even worse news for the show, which seems to be wholly based on the Good Morning America format in both name and style. The friendly, professional and pally morning show shed 57,000 viewers from its first day, with an average audience of 711,000 viewers for the two and a half hour broadcast.
Straight afterwards, Lorraine Kelly’s hour long show was also suffering from post-launch ennui. The early morning extravaganza of Lorraine (ITV, 8:30pm) was down 70,000 viewers from Monday, with a total of 922,000 viewers catching up with the Scottish presenter’s relaxed brand of chit chat.
It wasn’t a grim, dark and regretful morning for everyone, however – BBC’s Breakfast (6am) show somehow managed to remain unsullied by the flashy commercial experience on the other side. For the second day in a row the Corporation easily won the fresh breakfast battle, with another 1.5 million viewers tuning in.
An audience share of 36% secured the morning slot for BBC, a trend that would continue throughout the day.
Later at 9pm, BBC One debuted a new drama that celebrated life’s rough edges with an equally hardened main character. Happy Valley, despite its misleading title, painted Yorkshire as a near-lawless terrain with Sarah Lancashire’s emotionally weathered police officer battling on in spite.
The new drama is the latest vehicle from creator Sally Wainwright, who was behind recent well-received efforts such as ITV’s Scott & Bailey and BBC One’s Last Tango in Halifax, and aimed for a believable – if slightly stylised – tone.
The first of six episodes seemingly struck a chord with the TV viewing nation as 6.3 million viewers tuned in to see Lancashire attempt to come to terms with her daughter’s suicide while dealing with a local kidnapping. The straight-talking tone of Happy Valley helped secure the 9pm slot with a 27% audience share and was yesterday’s second most-watched show.
At the same time Channel 4 was once again giving a national platform to the undeserving in the first of a new series about tackling problem children.
So what’s to be done with 11 of the most unruly young boys in the country? Mr Drew’s School for Boys (9pm) seemed to think that shining a spotlight on them and broadcasting their antics on national TV would surely help the situation.
Channel 4’s biggest audience of the day, 1.4 million viewers, tuned in to see Mr Drew, a survivor of Educating Essex, basically take the Supernanny format and put it in a dubious boarding school scenario. The parent shaming fun secured a 6% share.
Earlier at 8pm, the unmitigated hour of wrong that is Embarrassing Bodies: Live from the Clinic (Channel 4) brought in 1.2 million viewers, while dependable performer Holby City won the 8pm slot for BBC One with 4.7 million viewers and a 22% share.
Over on BBC Two, the third episode of the not-quite-thought-through The Big Allotment Challenge (8pm) continued, possibly proving that the channel has pushed this particular format a bit too far.
After opening up with 2.5 million viewers, last night’s great carrot inspection was watched by just 1.7 million viewers and an 8% share. Still, it was BBC Two’s biggest show of the day.
Most of ITV’s evening schedule was taken up with the latest Live UEFA Champions League (7:30pm) game between Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. The semi-final second-leg match came live from the Allianz Arena in Germany and was watched by 4.3 million viewers, peaking at 5.4 million viewers just after halftime.
An average audience share of 20% watched the entire coverage which saw Ramos and Ronaldo hog all the glory, with both men securing a 4-0 victory for Real Madrid.
Earlier on, Emmerdale (ITV, 7pm) brought in an unusually low 5.3 million viewers, with Belle and Sean’s plans for teenage procreating helping net a 30% share.
Apart from two brief moments, BBC One managed to hold on to the largest audience share throughout the day, no doubt helped by Happy Valley, Holby City and, of course, the uplifting majesty of EastEnders (BBC One, 7:30pm).
Last night, the soap treated viewers to one of those all-too-rare meta moments where a downtrodden character realised the dramatic hell they had been living through and attempted to escape the Albert Square compound of endless misery, once and for all.
7.4 million viewers – Tuesday’s biggest audience – watched as long-suffering Denise Fox attempted to escape from the black hole of Ian Beale’s grief as she made the long, lonely walk through the dirty streets of Walford to a happier fictional setting.
The emotional aftermath of Lucy’s death continued to echo throughout the soap, bringing in a 37% share and anchoring BBC One’s very successful day.
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.