TV Overnights: barrage of soaps secures Thursday night for ITV
All of the country’s three most popular soaps were out in force last night and – unsurprisingly – took Thursday’s top four spots. First up was Emmerdale (ITV, 7pm & 8pm) which had to deal with the cheery matter of murder victim Gennie’s burial.
You know you’re living in an extremely small village when you’ve been asked to be a pallbearer for your murder victim that you actually barely knew. Such was the uncanny situation that unhinged sociopath Cameron faced last night in an hour of drama from the Dales.
The build-up to the funeral-based fun brought in 6.2 million viewers and, unusually for a soap double bill, the second slice attracted a bigger audience. 6.7 million viewers tuned in to see Cameron’s classy squeeze Chas get a bit inappropriate while doing a reading, as is the tradition in the land of soap. The latest helping of sheep dipping and serial killers attracted a 35% and 34% share respectively.
Sandwiched in between the grim funeral was a Tonight special which dealt with the nation’s obesity problem – just because there simply hasn’t been enough programming covering the topic lately.
The snappily titled Food Facts & Fiction: Tonight – The Health Traps (ITV, 8pm) uncovered such shocking truths like being unhealthy is bad and what not. The public service announcement from Captain Obvious pulled in 3.3 million viewers.
There were no murderers lurking about in Weatherfield, but last night’s rare solo outing for Coronation Street (ITV, 8:30pm) saw troubled centenarian Rita face down a gang of ‘hoodies’ in the local park.
7.3 million viewers watched as the extremely discourteous bunch of posturing drama school kids made some ill-mannered comments and snatched the soap stalwarts’ bag. The whole disturbing incident was the most watched show of the night, with the amateur dramatics netting a 35% share.
BBC One’s EastEnders faced relegation to fourth position at 7:30pm as the constant shouty aggravation didn’t manage to win over the crowds. Only 6.1 million viewers tuned in to see mouthy protagonist Carl White get augmented with an equally aggressive and annoying brother. While the Walford soap was overshadowed by its rivals it did manage to secure the biggest share for its time slot.
Things weren’t much more prestigious in the 9pm slot on BBC One as Paul O’Grady took us on one of those ‘odysseys’ that seem to be so popular with programme makers these days. Paul O’Grady’s Working Britain was a broad show for a broad audience and attempted to pay tribute to those people living on the fringes of society – the ones that choose to spend some of their week working in exchange for money.
4 million people went along for the first of two journeys that looked back on the history of the working classes, pulling in a 20% share and the biggest audience in the 9pm slot.
At the same time, ITV went a bit Channel 4 and offered up viewers a chance to gawp at people a bit different from them. My Dwarf Family (9pm) focused on different clans living with achondroplasia and netted 3 million viewers and a 15% share for the commercial broadcaster.
With ITV stealing Channel 4’s unique thunder, the once progressive broadcaster really had to step up its game, so viewers were given the third and final part of the provocatively titled How to Get a Council House at 9pm.
The fly on the wall documentary about the housing crisis in the borough of Tower Hamlets may sounds as unappealing as an online EastEnders spin off, but 1.3 million viewers tuned in for the final part of harsh realities of London life, securing a 7% share.
Later on in the nether realms of complete nonsense, a camera crew braved themselves as they entered the bedrooms of crazed One Direction fans in order to exploit their mental issues for late night entertainment.
Crazy About One Direction (Channel 4, 10pm) was a disturbing high pitched insight into the hyper world of extreme celebrity worship in a digital age. Only 530,000 viewers actually tuned in for the hysterics but the 1D army were out in force on twitter.
The show garnered a disturbingly high 695 tweets per thousand viewers. The militia was made up of a small 3.3% audience share but they were clearly devoted to their cause and highly engaged with the content at any rate.
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.
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).