TV Overnights: ITV1’s football coverage attracts 5.2 million

ITV1’s UEFA Champions League Live coverage scored a high of 5.2 million viewers during the prime-time slot yesterday evening.

Chelsea’s 4-0 win over Atletico Madrid pulled in 4.1 million average viewers and a 18.7% audience share between 7.30pm and 10pm, although the match was forced to share the highest ratings with BBC One.

The peak audience switched between BBC One and ITV1 all evening, with the BBC’s Holby City and Traffic Cops both managing to steal viewers away from the football.

Holby City peaked with more than 5 million viewers at 8.30pm, while the second half of Traffic Cops (between 9.30pm and 10pm) secured the top spot with a high of 4.7 million viewers.

Elsewhere, the last in the series of The Secret Millionaire Changed my Life – a spin-off from the originalThe Secret Millionaire programme – picked up a respectable 2.5 million viewers and a 11.6% average share during the all-important 9pm to 10pm peak-hour.

At the same time, BBC Two’s new sci-fi drama Defying Gravity, starring Ron Livingstone, Andrew Airlie and Christina Cox, started on a high of 1.8 million viewers and a 7.7% average audience share.  The second consecutive episode, meanwhile, followed with 1.4 million peak viewers and a 6.9% share.

Over on Five, The Man Who Sued God, a comedy film with Billy Connolly and Judy Davis, pulled in over 1 million average viewers and a 5.5% audience share between a longer 9pm to 11pm slot.

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.