TV Overnights: BBC One’s Eastenders distracts from ITV1’s World Cup coverage

BBC One’s hour-long Eastenders managed to outshine ITV1’s World Cup Live coverage during the early evening prime time slot last night.

Eastenders pulled in a high of more than 7.4 million viewers and a 35.3% average audience share for BBC One between 7pm and 8pm, which secured the top ratings during the hour-long slot despite competition from the Spain v Honduras game on ITV1.

BBC One plan to run two one-hour episodes of the soap this week, as well as its usual 30-minute show on Friday evening, in a bid to make up for lost episodes during the World Cup 2010 schedule.

Eastenders bosses are using big story-lines including Stacey’s labour, Lucas’ temper and Lucy’s exams to their advantage with the special-length episodes, and are successfully drawing viewers away from ITV1’s World Cup coverage on match days.

However, ITV1 still managed to win over the peak audience share from 8pm onwards and hit a high of over 7.8 million viewers at 8.45pm.  The full match, meanwhile, settled on 5.9 million average viewers and a 28.2% audience share between 7pm and 9.30pm.

Elsewhere during the 9pm to 10pm peak-hour, BBC Two’s Mary, Queen of Shops attracted 2.9 million average viewers and a 13% audience share, while Channel 4’s one-off documentary Chasing the Cumbrian Killer picked up 1.5 million viewers and a 6.9% share.

Over on Five, the Extraordinary People series continued with The Tiniest Girl in the World.  The story of the two year old primordial dwarf Charlotte, who is 22 inches tall, pulled in 1.9 million viewers and a 8.3% share between 9pm and 10pm.

BBC One and Two dominated the daytime ratings, meanwhile, with two live World Cup games and the start of Wimbledon 2010.  More than 2.2 million peak viewers tuned in to BBC One for the midday Portugal v North Korea match, and 2.8 million viewers for the Chile v Switzerland afternoon game.

BBC Two’s Wimbledon coverage peaked with 2.3 million viewers at around 3.45pm.  The channel’s full live coverage of the opening day, meanwhile, attracted 1.3 million average viewers and a 12.8% share between 12pm and 8pm.

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.