TV Overnights: BBC One dominates the prime time ratings

BBC One secured a peak run from 8pm onwards last night with Waterloo Road and Alan Sugar’s latest money-maker Junior Apprentice.

The channel’s popular school drama with Angela Griffin and Denise Welch pulled in more than 4.3 million viewers and a 18.5% average audience share during the 8pm to 9pm pre-watershed slot.

At 9pm, the third episode of the new Apprentice series, only this time with “Junior” hopefuls, attracted highs of 5.4 million viewers and a 22.6% average audience share throughout the all-important 9pm to 10pm peak-hour.

BBC One also held the peak share at 10pm with BBC News at Ten, which picked up 4.8 million average viewers and a 24.8% share.

Elsewhere, ITV1’s Wednesday night soap line-up proved popular in the early evening slot.  Over 6.6 million peak viewers tuned in to see Emmerdale at 7pm, while an even higher 8.1 million peak viewers watched Coronation Street between 7.30pm and 8pm.

However, the channel lost the peak-share from 8pm onwards, with its National Movie Awards 2010 securing just 2.8 million average viewers and a 12.8% share during the double 8pm to 10pm slot.

Over on Five, NCIS attracted 2 million average viewers and a 9.2% share between 9pm and 10pm, while Channel 4 and BBC Two’s peak-hour ratings both slipped below the one-million mark.

Channel 4’s Desperate Housewives, which is normally scheduled at the later time of 10pm, picked up 982,000 average viewers, while BBC Two’s Money programme settled on 697,000 viewers and a low 3.1% 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.