Strong Night For ITV1
It was a good night for ITV1 last night, with a Hollywood movie, soaps and a cop-based drama all bagging healthy audiences.
As is only to be expected, Emmerdale and Coronation Street drew the biggest audiences of the evening, with peaks of 8 million adults and 9.8 million adults respectively.
Emmerdale, on at 7pm, saw Daz’s birthday descend into chaos as he was hit by Diane driving her car through the picturesque Yorkshire countryside. The half-hour show managed an average of 7.7 million adult viewers.
Following on from that was Coronation Street, which had an average of 9.5 million viewers (a 48.1% share of the audience).
Deirdre looked to be at death’s door, but luckily for Ken it proved to be just a panic attack brought on by Tracy’s scheming, whilst high-class hooker Leanne got an earful from Janice over her questionable career move.
ITV1 was really flexing its programming muscles last night, with the Bill at 8pm getting a peak of 5.7 million adults.
Sunhill’s very own Shaft, Detective Sergeant Phil Hunter, once again played the maverick in trying to nail Danny but found himself reigned in by Nixon, who wanted things done by the book.
As if that wasn’t enough for TV fans, ITV1 then showed the Hollywood rom-com Along Came Polly, starring amiable goof-ball Ben Stiller and ex-Friends babe Jennifer Aniston.
The first part of the heartwarming tale, which was split into two parts to make way for the news at 10pm, had a peak audience of 4.6 million adults and an average of 4.2 million.
However, this was beaten by Channel 4’s Grand Designs, also on at 9pm, which saw Kevin McCloud help a couple jazz-up their dilapidated Bournemouth apartment.
The show had a peak of 5.2 million adults and an equally impressive average of 4.9 million adult viewers across its hour long running time.
Money was on most people’s minds yesterday, with Gordon Brown revealing his budget plans to an enthralled nation (see Budget 2007 Coverage – The Chancellor’s Speech Live) and BBC One showed some good timing with a programme investigating dodgy banking practice.
Whistleblower, on BBC One at 9pm, saw a fearless BBC reporter go undercover at one of Britain’s largest banks to discover how the public can be ripped off and lied to.
The show brought in a peak audience of 4.3 million adults, no doubt some of whom were shocked by what they saw.
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 Channel Four: 020 7396 4444 www.channel4.com BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk