Nearly 7m See Arsenal Defeat

Arsenal’s woeful display away to Manchester United in the fifth round of the FA cup attracted an average adult audience of almost seven million for Match of the Day Live on Saturday night.

The game, in which the premier league leaders didn’t register a single shot on target, had a peak audience of 8.1 million for the 15-minute period between 6.45pm and 7pm.

BBC One continued to enjoy healthy ratings for the rest of the night, with final of The One And Only pulling in a big audience. The final edition of the series, which saw Dusty Springfield impersonator Katy Setterfield earn a three-month contract to appear in Las Vegas, was watched by 6.1 million viewers (with a similar number watching the results show at 9.40pm).

This comfortably beat the return to ITV1’s schedule of Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway and the penultimate episode of Primeval, which were watched by 5.2 and 5.1 million respectively.

BBC One’s new conspiracy thriller, The Last Enemy, got off to a lacklustre start, with 4.2 million people tuning in to the opening episode. Winning the 9pm slot was the final episode of the Stephen Fry drama, Kingdom, which pulled in 5.1 million adult viewers.

Earlier on in the evening, Jessie Wallace’s appearance in wildlife drama Wild At Heart attracted 6.8 million viewers to the show. Elsewhere Steve Backley getting voted off Dancing on Ice had eight million tuning into the main show (with 7.4 watching the skate-off show where he departed).

Channel 4’s premiere of Kingdom of Heaven edged out Five’s premiere of Steven Seagal movie Today You Die, with 1.8 million watching the former and 1.7 seeing the latter.

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, ITV2 and Sky One.

ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.com BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk