Pride of Britain Awards secures prime time slot for ITV
Last night saw the powerful, famous and beautiful gather together in London’s Grosvenor House to heap praise and tacky awards on the normal people of the country in two-hour extravaganza of back patting and self-promotion.
The pageantry of forced emotion that was The Pride of Britain Awards 2014 kicked off at 8pm on ITV, with a mob of familiar faces lining up to dish out the honours to highly deserving people from all walks of life.
Thankfully, Carol Vorderman – the very essence of good nature and humility – was on hand to keep the whole shebang grounded, netting 4.6 million viewers and a 22% share.
Despite the patronizing tone in the air, most of Twitter decided to concentrate on Vorderman’s arse which was surely the result of a wardrobe accident on her behalf. What kind of monster would consciously try to distract attention from ill children with inappropriate clothing? The awards generated more tweets than any other show on Tuesday, with 68,441 tweets.
The whole event also managed to capture the biggest audience for ITV throughout the 8 to 9pm time slot.
Up against the first hour of glamorous sparkling dresses and teary-eyed tributes was BBC One’s Holby City (8m) which managed to attract 3.8 million viewers and an 18% despite the festival of feelings on the other side.
Meanwhile, BBC Two was launching an ambitious three part study with Cat Watch 2014: The New Horizon Experiment (8pm) following on from last year’s hugely popular The Secret Life of the Cat.
Last night saw presenter Liz Bonnin hook up 100 different felines in three different environments with cat cams and GPS trackers, building an extremely detailed picture of each creature’s particular habits.
2.6 million viewers tuned in for last night’s A Cat’s Eye View which explained exactly how the malevolent critters see and react to the world, netting a 13% share.
At the same time on Channel 4 was the return of Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners (8pm), a show about a set of mentally ill people on opposite ends of the hygiene spectrum.
Last night’s slice of nightmare-fuel saw cleaning-mad Andy visit a man with filthy habits and a collection of 300 troll dolls – a lethal combination. 1.5 million viewers and a 7% share tuned in for the Monday night fun, resulting in Channel 4’s biggest hit of the day.
On Channel 5 a repeat of Criminals: Caught on Camera at 8pm resulted in the broadcaster’s biggest hit with 848,000 viewers and a 5% share.
At 9pm, BBC One’s northern crime drama The Driver came to a satisfying end as David Morrissey’s cabbie-turned-gangland-driver looked to the police in one last push for a normal family life.
The edgy three part drama has seen the audience fall slightly each week, with the final episode marking the first time the show didn’t secure the 9pm slot for BBC One. After opening up with 4.3 million viewers the second episode saw last week’s episode decrease to 3.7 million. Yesterday’s final slice of Northern noir was watched by 3.6 million viewers and a 17% share.
On BBC Two, Professor Brian Cox and his melodic Mancunian enunciation made a return with a brand new series. Much more ambitious than anything attempted before, the first of five episodes of Human Universe (9pm) took a look at the history of humanity and our place in the cosmos.
While not quite as popular as watching cat cam footage of kittens rolling around in grass, 2.3 million viewers did tune into BBC Two to hear exactly what Cox had to say, netting an 11% share.
Over on Channel 4, Gordon Ramsay pushed angry chef to the point of stabbing him as he shouted and bullied his way through another episode of Ramsay’s Costa del Nightmares (9pm).
Taking confrontational criticism to satirical levels, 1.4 million viewers watched as Ramsay pushed a particularly damaged chef to the point of a panic attack but the mouthy Ramsay backtracked when his source of drama picked up a large kitchen knife.
A 7% audience share watched in disappointment as Ramsay survived his Spainish experience.
But it was earlier in the day that Tuesday’s biggest hit aired, with an hour-long Emmerdale (ITV, 7pm) taking the top spot. 6 million viewers and a 30% share tuned in for yet another foreboding soap wedding, with Priya doubts getting the better of her.
Suffering from the soap clash was EastEnders (BBC One) at 7:30pm which had the difficult task of dealing with Monday’s controversial episode. 5.8 million viewers tuned in to see Linda Carter suffer in silence and sit down for dinner with her attacker, resulting in a 27% share.
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.
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