TV Overnights: Cowell’s relentless machine dominates Saturday night for ITV
Saturday brought about the kind of showdown that keeps schedulers up at night as ITV and the BBC’s big guns of helium-light entertainment went head to head. Though only intersecting for 15 minutes, the third episode of Britain’s Got Talent (ITV, 7pm ) was enough to put the pressure on the Beeb’s talent show with a ‘twist’ – The Voice UK (8:05pm).
As more hopefuls queued up in hope of being the next big thing to eventually be discarded by the British public, Simon Cowell and his motley crew of over-qualified talent sniffer dogs put the mediocre in their place.
A total average audience of 9 million viewers watched as Alesha Dixon and Amanda Holden tried to keep straight faces while judging others on their worthiness. The all-singing, all-dog-dancing Saturday night extravaganza took in a very impressive 43% audience share. Despite peaking at 10.2 million viewers in the final fifteen minutes, the show did see a sharp drop in viewers once its rival started airing on BBC One.
After passively avoiding confrontation for the past three weeks, jumping about in the schedules like a nervous ninny, The Voice UK brought us yet another week of blind auditions. Once again Tool.i.am’s charisma and Jessie J’s deluded conviction that she’s some kind of national treasure failed to convince the majority of available viewers with the chair spinning nonsense, bringing in a respectable 7.7 million (a 34% share) for the channel.
Earlier, Doctor Who (BBC One, 6:30pm) spent an hour staring into his own navel, here played by the TARDIS. The latest adventure in time and space saw the Doctor’s unusual home deal with a bit of a security issue and go into a full-on meltdown.
While the internationally-scrutinised show hasn’t been setting Saturday night alight in the ratings war, the seventh series (or 153rd – depends on who you’re asking) has performed solidly over the past five weeks and has constantly been an iPlayer hit. 4.9 million viewers watched as companion Clara was swallowed up by the vindictive contraption, pulling in a 25% share.
Sunday’s weekend comedown came in the shape of Mr Chips, as sinister smiling man Stephen Mulhern continued to run the memory of Catchphrase (ITV, 6:45pm) into the ground. 4.5 million viewers watched as Roy Walker span in his convalescence bed, netting a 21% share.
Sadly, the new and shiny HD Mr Chips couldn’t compete with the intense coverage of stately homes on the hard-hitting Countryfile (BBC One, 7pm). The agricultural carousel of super interesting stories managed to pull in Sunday’s biggest audience and a 30% share.
6.7 million viewers tuned in to see fearless reporter Ellie Harrison go undercover as a tour guide in Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, with little regard for her own safety.
At 8pm, ITV packaged up the very definition of Sunday night viewing with another two hour Oxford-based murder mystery with the adventures of a young Inspector Morse. The third episode in the first proper series of Endeavour saw the super sleuth battle bureaucracy as much as he did a good old fashioned murderer, netting 5.3 million viewers and a 22% share.
At 9pm on BBC One, grim period soap The Village brought viewers to another level of despair as a shaken Joe returned from the front line carrying his body weight in demons. The penultimate episode of the northern drama attracted 4.8 million masochistic viewers, resulting in a 20% share.
At the same time on BBC Two, Mr News International was under the spotlight in Rupert Murdoch: Battle with Britain (9pm). The investigation questioned whether Murdoch’s ruthless ambition in the UK’s media, which brought him up against the establishment, might have neutered his own plans for domination. It would seem that Sunday evening viewers preferred to spend their last few hours of the weekend in fictional settings such Morse and The Village. Only 803,000 viewers watched the cautionary study, netting the channel a 3.3% share.
Meanwhile, Channel 5 continued to push the boundaries of television by adding their own slant on programmes looking at the Travelling community (because Channel 4 doesn’t seem to have that covered at all). The Truth About Travellers (9pm) revealed absolutely nothing that wasn’t already exhaustively covered in the rival channel’s plethora of shows on the subject. 1.3 million people tuned in regardless, securing Channel 5’s biggest hit of the day.
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.