TV Overnights: Football, football, football
The popularity of the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship was in no doubt this weekend as the tournament provided the biggest number of viewers for both BBC and ITV.
Friday
Friday night saw Euro 2012 (ITV1) kick-off at 7:15pm, heralding the tournament’s presence on the schedules for the next four weeks. Friday’s action, direct from Poland, saw Russia v Czech Republic (ITV1, 7:15pm) pull in an average audience of 4.5 million viewers. The audience peaked at 5.8 million viewers (a 25% audience share) in the last half an hour as Dzagoev and Pavlyuchenko both scored, helping Russia win 4-1.
Albert Square wasn’t too affected by the live football as EastEnders (BBC One, 8pm) still managed to pull in 6.6 million viewers. It was Kat’s second day back in the Vic and gardening leave has done little to tame her no-nonsense schtick. Straddling that fine line between speaking and screeching and waving that judgemental finger around like she’s been at Hogwarts for a sabbatical, Kat slotted right back into the never-ending drama, netting a 29% audience share.
Annoying mentalist Becky was thrust in to the spotlight over on Channel 5, as she was voted into the BB house by the public (just as Victoria got the boot). It would appear that Becky has been preparing for the camera ‘all her life’ and was full of lurid enthusiasm as she entered the house and jumped into the pool in her dress! Proper mental stuff. Sadly no one was watching as Big Brother: Live Eviction (10pm) attracted only 1.4 million viewers. If a desperate attention seeker falls in a pool and no one is around to hear it, do they make a sound? Unfortunately, yes.
Saturday
Saturday’s football feed began at 5pm on BBC One with Gary Lineker presenting half an hour of warm up from 4:30pm. Netherlands v Denmark was less eventful than the previous day’s game with the Danish team scoring the match’s singular goal 21 minutes after kick off. 5.6 million viewers watched the entire coverage with the game peaking towards the end; 7 million viewers tuned in hoping something would happen.
A quick 15 minute break for BBC News (6 million viewers, a 33% share) and it was straight back to the football. Germany v Portugal kicked off at 7:45pm and immediately garnered much more interest than the earlier game with an average audience of 7.7 million viewers. At 9pm a massive 9 million (40% share) viewers were watching as a solo goal from Gomez helped Germany advance in Group B.
Outside of the news, no other show came close to matching the audience of the Euro 2012 games except for one sturdy programme that will never go away. ITV1’s biggest hit of the day came in the form of All New You’ve Been Framed! Gone are the days of actually paying out cash for videos with researchers now trawling the internet for free clips; everyone’s a winner. The clip show of people self-harming for the nation’s entertainment netted a 12.5% audience share with 2.5 viewers tuning in (with 139,000 of those choosing to watch the grainy virals in HD).
Sunday
1.6 million viewers were back in front of the TV on Sunday morning as Serbian Djokovic took on Spaniard Nadal in the Men’s Singles Final of the French Open Tennis 2012 (ITV1, 1pm). It was somehow nice to see the rain affect other countries too as the game was called off until today but still managed to capture an audience of 1.6 million.
Sunday saw the football shift back over to ITV1 as 6 million people (33% share) watched Spain v Italy (4:15pm) result in a dramatic 1-1 draw.
Following a quick break for the news, the live football was back on at 7:15pm as Adrian Chiles got us all prepared for Republic of Ireland v Croatia by talking monotone to the camera for 30 minutes. The game, which kicked-off at 7:45pm, grabbed a slightly bigger audience than earlier as 6.6 million viewers caught Ireland receive a 3-1 thrashing, despite their decent qualifying performance. Viewers peaked at 8 million, with an average of 1.2 million watching the whole coverage in HD.
Meanwhile on the other side of the galaxy, fans of nonsensical plotting were in mourning as they paid their final visit to Wysteria Lane; Desperate Housewives came to an end over on E4 with the last two episodes going out from 9pm. As the preserved cast faced a higher amount of hysterical drama than usual, there was the kind of tense neck acting on display that Deirdre Barlow could only dream of. Only 301,000 viewers came to watch the second to last episode at 9pm, in which Bree had to choose between freedom and cherished mystical sisterly friendship. Things improved for the finale though as 1 million viewers tuned in to see Teri Hatcher give in to pressure by the ‘strong women’ around her and complete her transformation into a taut bag of chemical filler.
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.