TV Overnights: And the weekend belongs to…Casualty?
The exceptional weather this weekend had some interesting affects on our viewing habits. While the soaps and sporting events didn’t have the expected impact, dusty old favourites retained their loyal viewers.
Friday
Friday night kicked off with one of the many and varied sporting events of the weekend as Great Britain v Brazil (BBC One, 7:30pm) gave us all a sneak peak of just what we can expect from the official Olympic football team. Unfortunately Team GB got slaughtered, with Brazil winning 2-0. The omens weren’t too good but the game attracted an average audience of 3 million viewers. The game actually peaked in the first fifteen minutes as Sandro scored the first game of the match, attracting 4 million viewers.
As usual, the big draw of the night was drama over on Coronation Street. 7 million viewers tuned in to see the first episode at 7:30pm on ITV1, securing the biggest audience of the day. Ryan continued to make a tool of himself as he plotted against his aunt to grab a piece of the underwear empire. An hour later and Ryan was celebrating the arrival of Friday evening by getting hammered in the Rovers and ending up on the wrong end of Rob Donovan’s fist. 6.2 million people tuned in for the second helping of cobbled trauma.
Saturday
Despite the sudden and welcome arrival of summer, day three of Golf: The Open Championship (12:10pm) pulled in an average audience of 1.7 million viewers over the six hour running time. Coverage continued on BBC Two at 6:10 with the final two hours of golfing action netting 1.2 million viewers.
The biggest audience of Saturday belonged to dependable Casualty (BBC One, 9:20pm). The first of a two part story dealt with some very ‘current’ issues (the episode title even had a hash tag in it!) – such as social injustice, rioting and pesky BM Messenger-type communiqués setting off some good old fashioned summer rioting. 4.4 million people watched to see if Holby City survived the ensuing rioting (spoiler – it probably won’t, a Waterloo Road style relocation is on the cards).
Sunday
1.3 million viewers watched Bradley Wiggins take the victory in the Tour de France 2012 Live (2pm). The first British winner pulled in a peak audience of 2.4 million viewers and even got the coverage bumped up from ITV4 to ITV1.
Later on BBC One Casualty (8:10pm) put in another strong performance. The 42nd and final episode of the 26th series was watched by 4.4 million viewers. The episode saw the riots get out of control and was served with a heavy dose of moralising and attracted a 20% audience share.
This was followed by yet another final episode in the third series of Wallander (9pm). The Ystad police inspector had his hands full with a bunch of mental religious fanatics and a crispy old corpse. The Swedish sleuth secured the biggest audience of Sunday for BBC One and netted a 20% share.
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.