TV Overnights: Chelsea’s Champions League victory brings a peak audience of 8.7 m to ITV1
Chelsea’s victory over Barcelona at Stamford Bridge was the most watched show last night, attracting an audience share of 29%. Coverage of the Live UEFA Champions League match began at 7:30pm on ITV1 with Adrian Chiles (the man with the 12 year old’s head) on presenting duties. The game kicked off at 7:45pm and had an average audience of 7.1 million viewers tuning in for the entire coverage.
The audience surged towards the end of the first half as Didier Drogba scored the only goal of the match in the 45th minute, with 8.2 million seeing the Ivorian secure a win for Chelsea. The game attracted its biggest audience fifteen minutes into the second half, netting 8.7 million viewers; with 5.9 million of those hanging around for post-match analysis.
On BBC One at 9pm, Lord Sugar and his team of production elves have long since stopped trying to make The Apprentice (9pm) into anything other than a shambolic romp. Crucially, for the last few series the much sought after position in Amstrad HQ has been withdrawn and it would seem candidates have been solely picked for squirm value.
An average audience of six million viewers watched last night’s episode as the teams were asked to create a new fitness craze, produce a video to market the ‘product’ and then pitch the idea to leading gym chains. The remaining 55 minutes featured the usual brand of farcical, cringe-inducing behaviour and culminated with a ‘man of honour’ falling on his own sword. Figuratively speaking, sadly. The episode started with a smaller than usual audience of 5.6 million but clawed back more viewers as coverage of the Chelsea game wrapped up, helping The Apprentice peak at 6.6 million viewers.
In one of those increasingly occurring ‘I forgot they were dead’ moments, Elizabeth Taylor: Auction of a Lifetime on Channel 4 at 9pm failed to remind us about the impressive career of Dame Elizabeth, instead focusing on the shiny material things she ‘acquired’ throughout her lifetime. The documentary took us behind the scenes of last year’s Sotheby auction featuring enough treasures to make Jack Sparrow twitch in jealousy.
Speaking of which, the show featured many interviews, including Joan Collins who hopefully was frisked on her way out. Liza Minnelli and Mickey Rooney also popped up for extra ‘why not?’ value, helping pull in 1.9 million viewers, Channel 4’s biggest audience of the day. The auction last year raised an impressive $116 million, reminding the audience that being pretty around ridiculously wealthy men is always a valid career choice. If only the contestants on The Apprentice found it this easy to flog their wares.
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.