TV Overnights: Strictly wins Saturday night battle for BBC
The BBC had a successful weekend with the ratings as Saturday night’s Strictly Come Dancing saw BBC One peak with over 12.2 million viewers, holding 45.5% of the audience share, beating ITV1’s X-Factor’s peak of 10 million viewers.
Strictly Come Dancing held its popularity throughout the show, averaging over 11 million viewers and 43% of the audience share throughout the 7-8pm slot. Merlin followed with a healthy average of almost 6 million viewers and 22% of the audience share.
Over on ITV1 at 8.15, X-Factor attracted an average of 9.2 million viewers with it’s supplementary channel ITV1 HD attracting a further 950,000 viewers, totalling just over 10 million viewers throughout the show.
Following this at the 9.30pm slot was the newest series of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here on ITV1 and ITV1 HD, which clocked up an average of 8 million viewers, holding 32% of the audience share across the two channels.
Channel 4 competed with the Nicolas Cage film Knowing, which aired at the peak time of 9pm averaging just over 2 million viewers, holding an audience share of 9.2%.
Friday night saw BBC One continue to dominate ratings with the Children in Need 2011 show averaging a high of 10 million viewers between 7.30pm to 10pm. The show peaked at 8pm just shy of 12 million viewers with 47.8% of the audience share and continued over on BBC Two at 10pm averaging 4 million viewers. Meanwhile ITV1 (inc HD) I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here averaged 6.5 million viewers at peak time, which rose to an average of 9.5 million viewers on Sunday night’s show at 9pm.
The Sunday results show also proved popular for Strictly Come Dancing, peaking at 11.6 million viewers as the results were announced that Russell Grant was to leave the show. The X-Factor results show immediately followed at 8pm with an average of 10.6 million viewers revealing that Craig was the latest casualty to leave the competition.
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.