EastEnders clashes with hour-long Emmerdale and wins
An hour-long rollercoaster of high emotional drama set against a backdrop of seriously unlikely scenarios kicked off last night’s top shelf drama as ITV lobbed together two episodes of Emmerdale for the viewing public’s pleasure.
Kicking off at the unusual time of 6:45pm, the feature-length trip to the Yorkshire Dales saw village simpletons Marlon and Paddy face a swine-related tragedy as their precious pigs were snatched away from them.
Even more distressing for the residents of Emmerdale was the fact that, despite its early starting time, the end of the rural soap clashed directly with rival soap EastEnders (BBC One, 7:30pm) as BBC One’s schedulers refused to avoid a confrontation.
It turned out to be a clever move by the corporation, as its ‘gritty’ drama overshadowed ITV’s offering by over half a million viewers. In the end, the small town backstabbing and intrigue of Emmerdale attracted an audience of 5.5 million viewers. This represented a 27% share and the fourth biggest show of the day.
Performing much better was the bite-sized slice of Mockney ruckus at 7:30pm as the day’s biggest audience tuned in to see the newly-returned Stacey Slater and some bloke from Busted (who displayed a Danny Dyer-level of gurning expressions) shout at each other. A lot.
An average audience of 6.4 million viewers watched as the unlucky-in-life, downtrodden and perma-distressed hairdresser was handed another misfortune by the scriptwriting gods. The latest visit to Albert Square locked in a 29% share, resulting in Thursday’s biggest hit.
At the same time, ITV broadcast the latest UEFA Europa League (7:45pm) game live from White Hart Lane. An average audience of 3.2 million viewers watched as Ukrainian team Dnipro lost to Tottenham in a 3-1 defeat, resulting in a 15% share.
With the ITV late evening schedule taken up by the football, Inspector George Gently was given free reign to woo the remaining non-football mad audience at 8:30pm on BBC One. The latest episode of the sixth series saw the eponymous law man and his fresh-faced sidekick ® brought down to earth from last week’s LSD-sponsored mystery to investigate yet another murder.
And nothing says comedown like a dead miner discovered down a shaft set to the backdrop of divisive politics and union rumbles. 6.4 million viewers watched as the dynamic duo sifted through the coal dust for clues, easily winning the 9pm slot with a 25% share.
Meanwhile, over on Channel 5, professional obnoxious personality Alex Polizzi popped up in a Welsh hotel to demean the struggling owner on national TV, all for your viewing entertainment. Polizzi’s unnecessary caustic character on The Hotel Inspector (9pm) attracted the broadcaster’s biggest audience of the day with 1.1 million viewers and a 5% share.
At the same time, BBC Two attempted to educate audiences a little bit about the history of commercial aviation with Jumbo: The Plane that Changed the World. 1.3 million viewers tuned in to see grown men get very excited about steel and physics, resulting in a 6% share.
On Channel 4 at the same time was The Storms That Stole Christmas (9pm), because there hasn’t been a sensationalist documentary about terrifying weather on Channel 4 in at least two weeks.
The first of two episodes about seasonal rain cobbled together viewer’s mobile footage and impulsive first-hand accounts about how it rained real bad one specific time this winter. 1.9 million viewers caught up with the apocalyptic-tainted piece of reactionary schedule-filler, translating to an 8% 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.