TV Overnights: ITV1 unleashes hell to secure a total weekend win
ITV1 reigned supreme all weekend as the unrelenting juggernaut that is BGT came to a successful close. The variety show, Corrie and a repeat helped the channel beat BBC One.
Friday
A double helping of Coronation Street on ITV1 helped the station secure the biggest audience of Friday night. After an extremely rocky path on the road to true love, Eileen ended the week on a productive note. There has been only one little thing standing in the way of Eileen and Paul’s happiness these last few weeks and her name was Lesley (Paul’s wife who has alzheimers). As Paul rushed off to the solicitors to enquire about getting a divorce, Eileen conveniently left the woman alone for a short while only to come back and find she had expired. Uh-oh! I’m sure millions of people would believe Eileen but the Weatherfield jury service have been renowned for their heavily judgemental style. The first episode at 7:30pm was watched by 7.8 million viewers.
Over on BBC One it was decision time for Phil Mitchell on EastEnders at 8pm. After twenty-two years of arguments, divorces, suspected fratricide and good old fashioned normal murders, it was only on Friday night that it finally occurred to Phil that leaving Albert Square might be the wisest possible choice. After a week of viewing figures being battered by the non-stop hijinks of Britain’s Got Talent, EastEnders was watched by a healthy 33% audience share. With the fuzz breathing heavily on his back, Phil felt the pressure to protect his family and attempted to talk Ben and Jay in to ‘getting away’ (ie visit a random former character). The Walford drama brought in BBC One’s biggest audience of the weekend; 7.2 million viewers tuned in to see Phil come close to filling Roxy in on his son’s dark secret.
The second episode of Coronation Street (8:30pm) saw Eileen break the news to Paul and the suspicious whispering begin, capturing a slightly bigger audience than earlier with 7.9 million viewers. Will Eileen’s mistake haunt her through a long drawn-out storyline or will unlucky Lesley be swept under the carpet by this time next week? Only the gods know now. Elsewhere (a few doors down) Stella walked in on Sunita and Karl sharing a smooch, hopefully ending one of the most obvious affairs in recent TV history, helping to pull in a 34% audience share.
Saturday
Can it really be blamed on the sunshine? Only last week the UK’s top two talent shows were very close in popularity, with around 1 million viewers between them. After both sides put up a vigorous fight, for what seems like the longest time, The Voice UK (BBC One, 6:10pm) fell spectacularly at the last hurdle. Saturday night saw the Dutch import picking off acts from Tom and Billy’s teams and featured a try-too-hard performance from an ageing group who turned out to be the Scissor Sisters. The show’s audience dropped by 2.5 million viewers week on week with only a fifteen minute overlap with Britain’s Got Talent (ITV1, 7:30pm). A total of 5.6 million viewers stayed tuned for the 1 hour and 35 minute running time, with a 30% audience share.
After a week of blitzing the TV audience into submission, Britain’s Got Talent sauntered with ease over the finishing line with a record amount of viewers for 2012. Viewers couldn’t get enough of the familiar format over the past seven days with last week’s four semi-finals bringing in strong figures. The talent show started out on a low as the overlap meant ‘only’ 8.6 million were watching in the first 15 minutes. 11.3 million people watched the surplus of talent for the entire two and a half hours running time, resulting in an impressive 45% share. After Cowell & Co.’s unlikely start in the ratings war, the boss was no doubt delighted with the news that the show peaked as the results came thick and fast; 13.1 million viewers tuned in to see a young woman get rewarded a prize of £500,000 for having no human friends (above).
Britain’s Got Talent showed no remorse, even attacking an essential part of the fabric of our society; over on BBC One Casualty (8:40pm) wasn’t even spared. The medical show attracted a lower-than-usual audience of 3.3 million viewers. This week’s episode, in a brave break from the norm, focused on the delicate balance between the characters professional and personal lives, grabbing a 13% share along the way.
Sunday
It was back to secure familiar territory on Sunday; the schedule gave us a gentile Countryfile which led into comfortable detective mysteries at 9pm.
Over on Sky Sports 1 the Premier League final came to a swift and surprising end as Aguero netted a goal in injury time as Man City beat Queens Park Rangers 3-2. An average audience of 1.7 million tuned in to Live Ford Super Sunday (2pm).
Sunday was much kinder to The Voice UK as the audience dispelled with the performance-filler of Saturday night and went straight to the results show instead. The Voice UK Results netted a bigger audience by the main show with 6.3 million viewers (a 26% share) watching which acts were going to Room 101.
In the 9pm primetime slot both flagship channels pulled a repeat out of their Poké Balls to do battle. On BBC One there was detective drama series Death in Paradise starring comedian Ben Miller which pulled in 2.8 million viewers; the Saint-Marie set procedural just couldn’t fit the Silent Witness shaped hole. BBC’s disastrous weekend continued as this was beaten by a repeat of Lewis (9pm) on ITV1, which secured 4.6 million viewers. The Inspector Morse spin-off made a surprise appearance ahead of the new series on Wednesday. A new episode of Vera was pulled from the schedule at the last minute as the episode dealt with the sensitive issue of a suicide in an army barracks. It seems the audience didn’t notice either way.
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.