Spain’s defeat peaks at 10.6m, Paxman’s swan song nets 1.1m
Wednesday night brought a devastating outcome to World Cup holders Spain as they were sent crashing out of the competition in a shocking 2-0 defeat.
Coverage of the prime time FIFA World Cup 2014 match between the reigning champions and new contenders Chile got under way at 7:30pm on BBC One, with Gary Lineker on pensive presenting duties while Rio Ferdinand attempted to replace Paul the Octopus with all his finely tuned insightful predictions.
The day’s biggest average audience, 8 million viewers, tuned in for the entire coverage, with the surprising twists and turns helping to secure a share of 39%. Although the actual goal-scoring action took place entirely in the first half, the amount of viewers watching steadily increased all the way up to full time.
The final few moments of the game saw the audience peak at 10.6 million viewers, representing a 46% share for the final 15 minute window.
Earlier on in the day, two of the nation’s favourite soaps tried to make a stab at glory, with EastEnders first out of the trap on BBC One. Recently the London soap has been airing at the fatally earlier time of 7pm, with last night bringing no respite for Walford’s long-suffering souls.
A paltry audience of 5.1 million viewers tuned in to see serial bride Sharon Watts Mitchell Rickman thrillingly lay motionless in hospital, resulting in a 30% share.
Despite the power of Rita Sullivan’s ‘mourning’ expressions on Coronation Street (ITV, 7pm), it was no match for the might of the Chilean defenders over on BBC One. Struggling to write a fitting eulogy for deceased orange street bike Tina McIntrye (which is fair enough, really – she was pretty irritating), the Weatherfield mainstay brightened things up considerably by laying a verbal smack down on resident old dear Norris Cole.
Last night’s drama, which still centred around the messy aftermath of Tina’s bloody death, brought in the day’s third biggest audience, with 6.6 million viewers tuning in to see Rita’s boyf, Dennis, lay into busybody Norris, netting a 37% share.
At 8pm, All Star Mr & Mrs kept ITV ticking over with an audience of 3 million viewers and a 15% share while Mary’s Silver Service on Channel 4 only managed to attract 353,000 viewers and a 2% share.
At 9pm on BBC Two, Coast Australia and its line-up of chirpy presenters turned their cameras towards Melbourne and its surrounding coastline. Just 1.3 million viewers caught up with the spectacular visuals, resulting in a 6% share.
At 9pm ITV began to play it safe; aware that never-ending repeats of Endeavour isn’t quite everyone’s thing, the broadcaster offered up a repeat of Benidorm instead. The episode from February 2012 brought in 1.8 million sunseekers and an 8% share to the channel.
The sixth series of One Born Every Minute continued over on Channel 4, with one particular couple stuck choosing between Zeus and Dexter for baby names. 1.4 million viewers caught up with the latest look at the messy side of reproduction, netting a 6% share.
Very much in the same(ish) vein over on Channel 5 was My Violent Child (9pm), a documentary about little disturbed psychopaths which was watched by 1.3 million viewers and a 6% share.
Later at 10:30pm, Jeremy Paxman waved goodbye to his Newsnight (BBC Two) viewers in his usual sardonic manner, after 25 long years in the caustic chair. An audience of 1.1 million tuned in to see the eternal grump’s swansong as he took a turn at delivering the weather forecast, translating to an 8% share and helping generate the most amount of tweets for any TV yesterday.
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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