From There to Here falls -47% week on week as BGT dominates

Thursday night’s prime time slot brought the usual array of delectable drama and factual fun with ITV’s unrelenting combination of late-night Coronation Street and a daily helping Britain’s Got Talent rendering all other options ineffective.

The commercial channel’s unholy union between the schedule-hopping soap and the inescapable variety show will have caused reason for concern over at the BBC, with usually dependable performers seeing audiences crumble over the past week.

Take From There To Here (9pm) for example – BBC One’s shiny new drama series debuted last week under a raft of critical approval and nailed the 9pm slot with a impressive inaugural audience of 4.5 million viewers and a 22% share.

That successful performance would have most likely been repeated last night if it wasn’t for ITV’s week long campaign of all-out war, with the Manchester 90s-set drama seeing a disastrous week on week fall of 47%.

Last night the Philip Glenister-starring drama about a man who survives the 1996 IRA bombing and goes on to seize the day by taking up a mistress was watched by 2.4 million viewers and an 11% share.

Despite the massive drop in popularity there’s still hope the third and final episode of the upbeat drama can thrive in a world when ITV’s schedule gets back on track.

Try as they might it was, of course, Coronation Street (ITV, 9pm) after dark that secured the day’s biggest audience. Despite the fact that Tina McIntyre was still breathing (with some assistance, admittedly) the two murder attempts have seen the soap soar in the past week, managing to hang on to its loyal teatime fans despite being shifted to the 9pm slot.

8.5 million viewers watched as suspicions spread across the cobbles, much like spray-tan aficionado Tina’s brain matter. An audience share of 37% tuned in to see the latest bed-hopping action on the world’s most interbred and sexually tangled street, with 1.1 million people watching the exhilarating bedside vigil action in HD.

Straight up afterwards, Britain’s Got Talent Results (ITV, 9:30pm) helped ITV hang onto the biggest audience for the rest of the 9pm slot, with 7.3 million viewers and a 33% share tuning in to see someone’s dreams get shattered on live TV.

Over on BBC Two, there was another spin-off-from-the-main-event show with the first episode of Springwatch Unsprung (9pm). 1.3 million viewers tuned in to see Chris Packham, Michaela Strachan and Martin Hughes-Games stretch the paper-thin nocturnal spying format even further.

At the same time, Channel 4 turned their ever ready observational doc cameras onto Ann Barnes in Meet the Police Commissioner (9pm). The latest Cutting Edge documentary to simply film someone doing their job while being scored by the generic and now omnipresent Great British Bake Off-style musak took in 499,000 viewers and a 2% share.

An hour earlier, The Food Inspectors (BBC One, 8pm) encouraged viewers to be vigilant about everything, with Matt Allwright and Chris Hollins reacting to every nugget of information with their usual tabloid hysteria.

Thankfully, Gabby Roslin joined the dynamic schedule-filling duo on presenting duties, helping secure 2.3 million viewers and a 10% share.

On BBC Two, 2.3 million viewers caught up with Springwatch 2014, a whole 1 million more than the Unsprung show attracted straight afterwards. Channel 4 delivered another truck load of dubious Posh Pawn at 8pm, with 864,000 people tuning in for a repeat of the original documentary that spawned the ‘hit’ series.

As if there was any doubt, it was Britain’s Got Talent that won over the 8pm slot, with Thursday’s second biggest audience. A little over 8 million viewers watched as the judges attempted to convince viewers they were emotionally involved in yet another indistinguishable episode, netting a 37% share.

A little earlier in the day, the soaps were dominating the teatime slot (at home in their natural habitat) with Emmerdale (ITV) continuing to chart the social degradation of rural Yorkshire at 7pm.

The soap, which could now be officially designated a ‘gritty’ crime drama, pulled in 6 million viewers and a 33% share.

Over on BBC One at 7:30pm, EastEnders once again brought joy and happiness to a worryingly low audience of 5.3 million viewers. The episode, which saw Ian Beale attempt to down a bottle of painkillers just because that’s what’s expected of Albert Square residents, was watched by a 25% share, BBC One’s biggest audience of the 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.

To get all the latest MediaTel Newsline updates follow us on Twitter.