TV Overnights: Britain’s Got Talent hits a high of 9.8m viewers

Over 9.8 million peak viewers tuned in for ITV1’s popular Britain’s Got Talent on Saturday night.

The latest round of auditions with judges Amanda Holden, Michael McIntyre and David Hasselhoff banked an average audience of 9.1 million viewers and a 38.7% audience share between 8pm and 9pm.

Before it, Sing if You Can continued with more than 4.2 million peak viewers and an 18.9% average share between 7pm at 8pm.

Meanwhile, ITV1’s Saturday night peak-hour show Piers Morgan’s Life Stories: with the new BGT judge Hasselhoff pulled in 3.5 million average viewers and a 15.5% audience share.

However, BBC One dominated most of the Saturday schedule with its football and rugby coverage, though Doctor Who claimed the highest ratings of the day with 6.6 million peak viewers at 6.45pm.

BBC One also secured the majority of the top ratings on Sunday. Last week’s AV vote made The Andrew Marr show a popular choice with 1.7 million peak viewers, while 1.4 million tuned in for The Politics Show at 11am.

The Turkish Grand Prix Live attracted a high of more than five million viewers for BBC One during the Sunday lunchtime slot, while Land Girls, Countryfile and Antiques Roadshow were popular during the early-evening.

In the all-important 9pm slot, the channel’s new one-off historical drama Atlantis managed to beat ITV1’s Vera to the top spot with 5.5 million peak viewers.

However, the second episode of ITV1’s new Brenda Blethyn drama won over the peak audience for a short fifteen minute period at 9.30pm. Vera picked up over 4.9 million average viewers and a 20.1% share between 8pm and 10pm.

Channel 4’s long-running game show Deal or No Deal also managed to steal the limelight for 30 minutes at 5pm with a peak audience of 1.5 million viewers.

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.