Return of prodigal patriarch Ken Barlow nets 6.7m on Corrie
Monday’s TV line-up brought a distinct return to normality, with police procedurals and a slew of soaping action free to dominate audience viewing now that the schedules are free of disruptive and omnipresent sporting events.
It’s been a pretty tough summer for everything that wasn’t the World Cup or Commonwealth Games, with the long-standing soaps dealing with the hardest blows.
Blame it on continuously fragmenting audiences (pretty much everyone has access to one of those fancy catch-up players, these days), the fact we can actually see that giant firey ball in the sky outside, or perhaps the live figures might accurately reflect the slow death knell for the outdated format – either way, the numbers aren’t what they used to be.
Hollyoaks popped Monday’s soap cherry at 6:30pm on Channel 4, with 893,000 viewers and a 6% share catching up on the all the glamour in exciting Chester. Over on E4 at 7pm was the first look at tomorrow’s episode in which an inexplicable slow moving van managed to overturn a car containing two of the soap’s popular characters.
The shock tactic brought in an audience of 665,000 viewers, a 4% share and generated the second highest amount of tweets for the day.
At the same time on ITV Emmerdale (7pm) saw Adam Barton dabble with some more of those drugs that everyone in the countryside seems to love, securing 5.3 million viewers and a 32% share.
Straight up afterwards, there were major histrionics in the Barlow household as elderly wandering vagabond, Ken, returned after twelve months away to find that Weatherfield was just as rubbish as when he left.
6.7 million viewers tuned in to see Ken learn that Deirdre had been lying to him about his son, leading to intense scenes of shouty acting. The high dramatics at number 1 Coronation Street (ITV, 7:30pm) brought in the day’s second biggest audience and an impressive 37% share.
Over on EastEnders (BBC One, 8pm) Dot Cotton rounded up all those aimless youngsters of Albert Square and forced them to learn a little respect by holding a ceremony to mark the centenary of the First World War.
Naturally the sombre mood was broken by Kat’s waters breaking, capturing 5.9 million viewers and a 32% share.
It was back to ITV and Coronation Street (8:30pm) afterwards and, unusually, the second episode did slightly better than the first with the Barlow patriarch’s return helping to bring in Monday’s biggest audience. Scenes of Ken losing his… calm with Deirdre secured 6.7 million viewers and a 32% share.
BBC Two joined in on Dot Cotton’s commemorating with the majority of the broadcaster’s evening being taken up with live coverage of World War One Remembered (6:30pm and 7pm).
1.5 million tuned in for the two and a half hours of Huw Edwards- fronted coverage from Belgium and London, resulting in an 8% share. At 9pm there were a further two hours live from Westminster Abbey, watched by 2.4 million viewers and a 13% share.
Meanwhile, it was finally time for BBC One to throw in the summer scheduling towel and put its feet up after a relentless few weeks. Taking a page out of ITV’s book, the broadcaster offered up a repeat of twee murder-island drama Death In Paradise (9pm).
On the plus side, it did provide another chance to see Ben Miller’s DI Poole shuffle off his mortal coil at the hands of an ice pick. 2.5 million viewers tuned in to relive the shock of the main character being killed off in the opening moments of series three, opening the door for that tool from the BT ads to take over and securing a 12% share.
Over on ITV, Nicky Campbell was busy putting the strange in ‘estranged’ as Davina McCall once again joined him to meddle with people’s personal lives in Long Lost Family (9pm).
The triumph of the hit show continued with the latest manipulative reunions securing the 9pm slot with 4.3 million viewers and a 20% share.
At the same time on Channel 4, latest observation documentary Royal Marines Commando School (9pm) secured 1.9 million viewers, with a 9% share tuning in for the hopefuls’ latest trials and tribulations.
Channel 5 continued to slip further into barrel-scraping tabloid territory with reactionist nonsense Dangerous Dog Owners & Proud (9pm). Featuring truly awful people, the sixty minute slice of OUTRAGE-bait was watched by 1.3 million (a 6% share) and was the third most tweeted about show 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.
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