TV Overnights: Lord Sugar’s recycled ideas secures 7m for BBC One
Last night’s instalment of The Apprentice (9pm) attracted the biggest audience of the evening for BBC One, grabbing a 29% audience share.
The remaining (unlucky) 13 contestants were put to work by acquiring second hand tat and re-branding it as vintage chic in London’s trendy East End. As usual planning and strategy fell to the wayside as sheer panic set in, with the ladies linguistically wrestling prospective customers into submission. Throughout the episode phrases like retro and up-cycling were used. A lot.
The forth week of the bumbling adventures of Lord Sugar’s motley crew actually improved on last week’s audience by almost half a million viewers. 6.9 million people tuned in to see the ladies once again return to the boardroom, each handed a metaphorical knife upon entry, to be nestled securely into each others backs.
Earlier on ITV1, Vicar Ashley continued to knock his defenceless Dad in Emmerdale about as Sandy attempted to make a desperate phone call for help. The soap secured an average audience of six million viewers, helping score a strong audience share of 31%.
Over on BBC One at 7:30pm was Fake Britain, presented by Dominic Littlewood, which attracted the channel’s second biggest audience of the night. The sensationalist consumer show delved into the murky world of fraudsters and general dodgy dealings with Dominic pleading viewers not to give their life savings away to complete strangers. The second episode of the third series was watched by 4.5 million viewers (a 23% share).
Perhaps the lack of any serious competition in the 9pm slot was responsible for the small boost in viewers witnessed by The Apprentice. Up against the BBC hit on ITV1 was a repeat of World War II drama Foyle’s War, which managed an average audience of 3.2 million viewers for the two-hour running time. The final episode in the sixth series of the detective drama from novelist Anthony Horowitz (a taster for the recently announced new series to be aired in 2013) pulled in a 14% audience share.
Have you had your fill of commemorative Titanic programming yet? Channel 4’s timely documentary about the sinking of cruise liner Concordia provided us with a more current tragedy for our entertainment. The Sinking of the Concordia: Caught on Camera (9pm) documented the recent disaster through security cameras and survivors’ mobile phones and was watched by 1.9 million viewers, providing Channel 4 with its biggest audience of the night.
National treasure-in-waiting Nick Hewer made a rare appearance on The Apprentice: You’re Fired (10pm), which helped the spin-off show build on last week’s audience, resulting in BBC Two’s highest audience of the day and a 14% share. 2.8 million viewers watched as Nick and comedian Sean Lock spent half an hour exploring just what went so wrong for Team Sterling.
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.