TV Overnights: Britain’s Got Talent finale spelbounds 13m viewers

ITV1’s Britain’s Got Talent final attracted an impressive high of more than 13 million viewers and a 52.1% average audience share on Saturday night.

After seven rounds of auditions and five live semi-finals, the talent show came to a close with 10 finalists taking to the stage for one last time to impress viewers and judges Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan.

More than 11.7 million viewers were glued to ITV1 for two and a half hours during Saturday evening’s prime time slot to see the group of acrobatic gymnastics Spelbound win £100,000 prize money and a chance to perform at the Royal Variety Performance in December.

ITV1 also held the peak-slot on Friday evening with the penultimate BGT, which pulled in a high of 9.5 million viewers, and on Sunday evening with Soccer Aid 2010.

The three-hour long programme, which saw footballing heroes team up with celebrities for an England v Rest of the World match at Old Trafford in aid of Unicef, scored 7.5 million peak viewers and a 23.9% average audience share between 7pm and 10pm.

However, aside from the evening slots, BBC One dominated the majority of the daytime ratings this weekend.  On Saturday, the channel’s coverage of Derby Day pulled in 1.8 million viewers and a 13.9% share.  Shrek 2, meanwhile, picked up more than 4 million viewers before Doctor Who attracted 4.8 million peak viewers and a 27.7% share.

On Sunday, BBC One also banked the daytime ratings with The Andrew Marr Show, the Eastenders omnibus,  Halcyon River Diaries and Countryfile.  However, BBC One’s coverage of the BAFTA Awards 2010 was overshadowed by ITV1’s charity match.

BBC Two also secured the peak audience share at times throughout yesterday’s schedule with Something for the Weekend, Great British Menu, MotoGP 2010 and coverage of the Tennis: French Open, which picked up a high of more than 1.7 million viewers and a 11.4% average 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.