ITV’s I’m a Celebrity returns on triumphant form

This past weekend saw a rare annual event – one that signals clearly to viewers the silly season has well and truly arrived. I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! popped up on Sunday night’s schedule to complete the Holy Trinity of overblown, over-publicised and over-hyped prime time reality competitions.

Fans of glittering and disposable programming must have thought the planets well and truly aligned as ITV’s jungle show about maximising C-list celebrity exposure joined The X Factor to take on BBC One’s (comparatively) quaint show about smiling and sequins.

First out of the trap on Saturday evening was Strictly Come Dancing (6:30pm), which this week was pitched up in sunny Blackpool – a delightful town you may remember from the first series of 999: What’s Your Emergency?. Coronation Street‘s Natalie Gumede returned to the gladiatorial dance floor after last week’s attention grabbing health issues, helping secure an audience share of 44%.

In total, 10.3 million viewers watched the two hour event, right as the contestants’ dressing rooms were being raided by some tunnel dwelling locals, nailing the biggest audience of Saturday night.

Which wasn’t great news for ITV’s struggling show pony, The X Factor (8pm). Despite ramping up the hype and dramatic elements in every conceivable way possible over the past few series, there are signs that at least some viewers are growing tired of the neverending cycle of familiarity.

This week the inevitable victims of Cowell’s publicity machine were tasked with tunes relating to the ‘Great British Songbook’, which somehow involved a song from U2. A still impressive 8 million viewers tuned in to see the remaining eight contestants go through the usual motions, resulting in a 34% share.

Elsewhere, family favourite Atlantis (8pm) continued to perform well for BBC One. The teen angst, codpieces and ye olde greek cleavage proved that there was something for everyone and secured the day’s third biggest audience with 4.5 million viewers catching a piece of the action.

Way back at the beginning of the weekend there was only one show that really caught the nation’s attention, with Children in Need 2013 (BBC One, 7:30pm) dominating Friday night. The six hour event saw Terry Wogan and Tess Daly attempt to keep the energy levels up despite the depressing VT’s scattered throughout.

An average audience of 9.7 million viewers stayed tuned throughout the epic proceedings, securing a 41% share.

Sunday saw I’m a Celebrity… (ITV, 9pm) sneak into the battlefield while its rival show was busy shedding viewers with the ‘results’ edition. Strictly Come Dancing: The Results (BBC One, 7:15pm) had the good sense to not hang around for long, with a lower audience of 9 million viewers tuning in for the 45 minute reveal.

At 8pm on ITV, The X Factor actually managed to boost some interest from Saturday night with an increased audience of 9 million viewers watching as little Sam was sent on the next Megabus back to Essex, resulting in a 33% share.

All that would have been the biggest news of the weekend if not for the return of ITV’s juggernaut show. The reworking of The Word’s “I’d do anything to get on television” section returned with another ten celebrities, desperate to perform degrading acts in exchange for a bit of exposure.

The launch of I’m a Celebrity… attracted a whopping 11.6 million viewers, up from last year’s launch which managed 10.2 million. The scenes of adequately familiar faces heading into the ‘new’ phase of their careers savagely beat the needy kids on Friday night to become the weekend’s biggest hit with a 45% share.

Ant and Dec’s antics down under generated a lot of activity on Twitter, with 62 tweets for every 1,000 viewers watching. In total, there were 718,788 tweets about I’m a Celebrity… with The X Factor Results trailing behind with 353,052 tweets. The sizeable following of Strictly Come Dancing saw the technophobic audience only manage 13,669 tweets.

Elsewhere on Sunday, Countryfile (6:15pm) brought in 7 million viewers to BBC One, while an hour long episode of Coronation Street (ITV, 7pm) went up against the Strictly results and netted a lower than usual 6.2 million viewers – although ITV might hold off cancelling it just yet.

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