The Apprentice falls night on night, nets biggest 9pm share
Wednesday night on BBC One witnessed the second consecutive night featuring Alan Sugar’s besuited gorms, as they returned for another evening of failure, panic blaming and good old-fashioned grovelling in The Apprentice (9pm).
The second episode of the tenth series saw the show keep things fresh and modern as this year’s bumper amount of candidates were tasked with creating a desirable piece of wearable tech. Still divided by gender, lady team Tenacity came up with a charging station that doubles a jumper, while silly man team Summit decided to put a video screen onto a t-shirt.
Despite both ideas being simply awful, one team hit a wall at the final hurdle when, at a late stage, they were told that the idea wasn’t actually feasible, leading to a massacre in the boardroom.
Down from Tuesday’s debut audience of 6.7 million viewers, last night’s hour of painful pitching, professional-level dithering and the usual high standard of incompetence netted just over 6 million. An audience share of 27% helped the show about competitive irritants secure the 9pm slot.
At the same time on ITV, super best friends Scott & Bailey (9pm) continued to survive life’s struggles together, surviving both the dangerous criminals of Manchester and their disastrous personal relationships.
3.7 million viewers tuned in last night to see DS Bailey get sent on a long-term mission to dumpsville, while DC Scott was busy being ignored by her daughter. The latest sliver of the northern crime-solving duo netted a 16% share.
In complete contrast, Channel 4 was busy dishing out aspirational fantasies at the same time with the latest episode of Grand Designs (9pm). Last night’s plans definitely upped the ‘bonkers’ value significantly, with this week’s monied couple looking to build a floating house on the Thames, which brought in 1.9 million viewers and an 8% share.
BBC Two managed to pull in similar numbers at 9pm, with Swallowed by the Sea – Ancient Egypt’s Greatest Lost City (something to do with history apparently) netting 1.8 million viewers and an 8% share.
In a shocking departure from its usual produce, Channel 5 decided to offer up something not quite as highbrow with the latest exciting instalment of Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away. 1.5 million people watched grown adults get their possessions taken off them, resulting in a 7% share.
Earlier at 7pm, Charity Dingle was still attempting to scream her way out of her shipping container prison in Emmerdale on ITV. 6.5 million viewers watched as the village said good riddance, securing a 34% share.
At 7:30pm, Carla Connor took to the stand to mistakenly send her husband down for Tina’s murder on Coronation Street. The biggest audience of the entire day tuned in to see Peter Barlow’s year get even worse -resulting in 7.7 million viewers and a 38% share.
At 8pm on BBC One, the final series of school drama Waterloo Road was watched by 3.3 million viewers and a 16% share, while stories of dodgy health practitioners helped Trust Me, I’m a Doctor (BBC Two) net 2.7 million viewers and a 13% share.
ITV’s rebooted retro game show Celebrity Squares captured an audience of 3 million viewers (a 14% share), while over on Channel 4 The Supervet secured 1.7 million viewers as the Superego vet saved some more furry lives, resulting in an 8% 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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