Mr. Selfridge’s emotional finale beats The Musketeers
Friday saw Sport Relief 2014 finally arrive, bringing another all-star biennial night of high-energy presenters, depressing pieces to camera, one or two familiar faces and plenty of worthy pleading for donations.
After what feels like months of build-up, the show designed to make you laugh, cry and ultimately hand over your cash kicked off at 7pm on Friday. Simon Cowell’s latest genetic creations, Little Mix, were on hand to treat viewers to the official single – a ‘reenergised’ cover of Cameo’s Word Up!
Despite that particular horror, an average audience of 7.8 million viewers managed to stick with the three hour main show, resulting in a 35% share.
Naturally, the event garnered a lot of interest on Twitter, easily generating the most tweets for a TV show that day. In total, 319,475 tweets were posted throughout the event, translating to 41 tweets for every 1,000 viewers.
It seems the build-up may have exhausted some viewers, with the weekend’s ratings failing to recover afterwards. The audience for the first segment of Sports Relief 2014 pulled in 7.8 million viewers but no other show managed to match or beat that figure over the next two days.
BBC News at Ten came along at – you guessed it – 10pm and was watched by 4.9 million viewers. The remainder of Sport Relief 2014 saw viewers trickle off when it returned – 4.9 people were tuned in at 10:45pm but this fell to 2.8 million by midnight.
Earlier on in the evening, the first episode of Coronation Street (ITV, 7:30pm) was slightly affected, down to a lower-than-usual 6.8 million viewers tuning in for the latest drama from up north, resulting in a 31% share.
But it was the second visit to Weatherfield at 8:30pm that was really hurt by the distracting panto on the other side. Only 5.6 million viewers tuned in to see the return of Kevin Webster, with even the sight of him punching Tim failing to improve the audience share of 23%.
After spending three whole years attempting to convince UK viewers that The Voice UK (BBC One, 6:45pm) really was a big player in the reality TV landscape, Saturday night continued to confirm that perhaps the pipe dream was becoming reality.
Just like the desperate contestants on the show, The Voice UK proved that you just have to believe in something really bad and all your dreams will eventually come true.
6.2 million viewers tuned in for the first live performances of the series, as the third year of the karaoke show hurtled towards its Easter finale.
While the ratings weren’t phenomenal they were enough to lock in the biggest audience of the night, translating to a 28% share. At 8:50pm, the four judges were back for another 35 minutes as they stretched out announcing who was leaving for as long as humanly possible.
After mashing up songs from Kylie, Black Eyed Peas and Kaiser Chiefs (god help us all) four contestants were eventually sent home, netting 5.9 million viewers and a 28% share.
Elsewhere, it was a relatively quiet night for TV viewing – Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway (ITV, 7pm) was the only show to even closely give BBC’s singing competition a run for its money, netting 6 million viewers and a 27% share.
BBC One had a relatively dependable arsenal in its Saturday line up – Casualty (9:30pm) was watched by 5.6 million viewers and later Match of the Day (10:30pm) scored 4.2 million viewers.
Sunday saw the BBC stick to their usual Xanax-inspired afternoon schedule, with the TV national lapping up the selections of dependable favourites on offer.
Another exciting hour of rural madness burst onto viewers screens at 7pm as Countryfile (BBC One) took off on another exciting adventure. 6.6 million viewers – the day’s biggest audience – watched as Ellie Harrison looked back on all the beach-related stories from the show’s past. Because, why not?
The craziness continued at 8pm, as Fiona Bruce and her mad mates returned after an eight week exodus with another bout of fleecing old ladies in Antiques Roadshow (BBC One). An audience of 5.8 million people tuned in to see a group of people queue outside Exeter Cathedral, staring into the camera with uniquely lost expressions each time it went by.
At the same time on BBC Two was the first episode of Lambing Live‘s (8pm) third series, a show that has everything you need to know in the title. 1.8 million viewers watched to see just how well Katie Humble was doing after buying her very own farm, netting an 8% share.
At 9pm, the final episode of Mr Selfridge‘s second series went head to head with Sunday night rivals The Musketeers (BBC One) – and actually won! 4.6 million viewers tuned in to see the retail king learn that he was to become a single man again just in time for the third series.
The action and adventure on BBC One couldn’t compete with the drama on ITV , with the penultimate episode of d’Artagnan’s adventures only managing an audience of 4.2 million and a 19% share.
Doing much worse was Louis Theroux’s LA Stories over on BBC Two. Only 1.8 million viewers tuned in to see the broadcaster’s latest focus – weaponised dogs on the streets of California’s most populous city.
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.