England’s Florida football ‘friendly’ peaks at 8.2m on ITV
After a week-long run of late-night prime time specials, last night saw Coronation Street being moved around the schedule once again with ITV airing the popular soap at the precariously earlier time of 7pm.
Kicking off Wednesday’s evening entertainment, the latest visit to Weatherfield saw old soak Peter Barlow turn to the demon drink and cause some trouble, because that’s always a great idea when you’re the number one suspect in a murder enquiry (even if it the victim was just official street bike Tina).
Just two weeks ago, when the northern soap aired in the same earlier spot, the audience plummeted to 5.5 million viewers, a drastic drop for the perennially popular programme. While yesterday’s audience wasn’t as dramatically affected, Coronation Street was still short of its usual standards.
6.8 million viewers – Wednesday’s biggest audience – tuned in to see the inebriated factory owner on the receiving end from the real Tina-slayer, Rob Donovan, netting a still-healthy 35% share.
Right afterwards was ITV’s big offering for the night as England faced off against Ecuador in a pre-world Cup friendly. Coverage of the Live International Football game started at 7:30pm, with the action from sunny Florida (beats Wembley) kicking off at 8pm.
An average audience of 6.4 million viewers (a 29% share) tuned in for the entire two hours and forty minutes of coverage. The game, which ended in a 2-2 draw, peaked at 8.2 million viewers round 9:30pm and easily secured the biggest audience share in the prime time slot.
Battling out with ITV and the England team was head Watchdog (BBC One, 8pm) Anne Robinson and the runts of the presenting litter, Matt Allwright and Chris Hollins. 3.4 million viewers tuned in to discover that the outside world is full of nothing but tricksters, resulting in a 6% share.
Over on BBC Two, Springwatch 2014 (8pm) was in full bloom as Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan continued to get super excited about spying on birds settling down for the night. The latest helping of rural fun brought in 1.9 million viewers and a 9% share.
Over on Channel 4, Mary Portas fought for the attention of pensioners looking for work in Mary’s Silver Service. The first of three episodes was watched by just 632,000 viewers and a 3% share.
Not doing much better was Channel 5’s Off the Scale: Big Body Squad (8pm), a documentary looking at the work of the people who look after the morbidly obese. 652,000 viewers went along for the grim ambulance ride, resulting in a 3% share.
At 9pm there wasn’t a scripted drama show in sight, with all the main broadcasters offering a flurry of factual content instead.
On BBC One there was the third part of Del Boys & Dealers (9pm), a documentary about those frugal wheeler dealer types. 2.7 million viewers tuned in to view an auction that specialised on lost luggage, with bids on the mysterious cases netting a 12% share.
Over on BBC Two, Coast Australia (9:10pm) spent an hour looking at the continent’s easily overlooked island Tasmania, with 1.5 million viewers (a 7% share) joining softly toned prog rock presenter Neil Oliver for a beautiful gander at the coastline.
24 Hours in A&E (Channel 4, 9pm) brought in the channel’s biggest audience of the day with its usual mix of real life human drama and tragic tales. 1.7 million viewers joined the latest rotation featuring bruised pensioners hoping for recovery and broken teenagers looking for YouTube fame, netting a
At the same time, Channel 5 continued its tradition of airing dubious investigations and exposés with the particularly unsettling The McCanns and the Conman (9pm). The programme looked at a security consultant hired by the McCanns a year after their daughter disappeared using publicly funded money.
Despite the fact that Kevin Halligen and his team actually did a good job, with most of his findings being part of current police investigations, The McCanns and the Conman focused on the most dubious parts of his CV. An audience of 744,000 joined the witch hunt, providing a 3% share and Channel 5’s biggest hit of the day.
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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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