The Mill returns to add some bleakness to a sunny weekend
The glorious weekend weather saw the nation turn their backs on TV screens in droves, escaping the glare of advertising to enjoy all that the outdoors had to offer – at least that’s what the latest figures seem to suggest.
Although perhaps not everything can be blamed on the temperature; sometimes awful scheduling can have a similar effect to a heatwave on potential audiences. Case in point was the bizarre choices made by ITV.
Not satisfied with repeating it every second weekend – where it’s usually (and correctly) designated to family friendly daytime fodder – the commercial broadcaster thought it would be a good idea to move Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace (8:30pm) to the dizzying heights of prime time.
The first entry in the prequel trilogy, the film broke a billion fan boys’ hearts upon the original release in 1999 and time hasn’t made the introduction of *shudders* Jar Jar Binks any easier. ITV’s big Saturday night adventure brought in an audience of 1.3 million viewers and a 7% share.
Over on BBC One, there were musical festivities Live at Edinburgh Castle (8:30pm), as the Corporation once again rolled Jessie J out of her storage cupboard in the misguided notion that people over the age of twelve actually like her brand of ‘mayhem’.
An audience of 3.6 million people (a 20% share) watched the line-up get even edgier with the likes of Kaiser Chiefs, Paloma Faith and dodgy bruiser Katherine Jenkins helping the crowd warm up ahead of Wednesday’s opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Games.
Over on Channel 4, the reboot of a franchise nobody really cared about provided the channel’s biggest hit of the day. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (9pm), which saw stoner scientist James Franco accidentally wipe out the human race with help from his cute little simian friend, secured 2.8 million viewers and a 15% share.
Despite a half decent prime time turn out there was very little activity elsewhere. In fact, the highest rated show of the entire day was BBC News which got 3.7 million viewers at 10:35pm on BBC One, which says it all really.
There was a slight improvement yesterday as old institutional favourites tempted the weak back to their sofas, with John Craven’s quarter of a century anniversary on Countryfile (BBC One, 7:20pm) netting the day’s biggest audience.
The 1,273rd episode of the rural magazine show saw the long-standing presenter take a brisk walk down memory lane while his co-presenting buddies took a look at some of the issues dealt with in the last 25 years.
In total, 4.7 million viewers tuned in for the downbeat celebrations, translating to a 24% share, which was just 1,000 more than Antiques Roadshow (BBC One, 8:10pm) managed straight afterwards. 4.7 million viewers watched as Fiona Bruce spent another week in the exciting surroundings of Wentworth House, resulting in a 24% share.
At the same time, ITV offered up a repeat of ye olde spy drama Foyle’s War (8pm) from July 2013. The 1946-set two-hour thriller was watched by 2 million viewers and a 9% share.
Doing much better was Seven Wonders of the Commonwealth (9:10pm) on BBC One, a travelogue helping to celebrate the start of the Commonwealth Games. 4.1 million viewers and a 20% share watched as random celebrities pointed at random marvels around the former British Commonwealth.
9pm brought the return of grim northern drama The Mill over on Channel 4. Set four years after the first series and the introduction of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, the workers of Quarry Bank Mill still wouldn’t be mistaken for Balamory characters.
1.7 million viewers watched as things went from bad to worse as those selfish southerners swarmed the north looking for work, netting an 8% share and Channel 4’s biggest hit 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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