TV Overnights: The X Factor reaches nearly 14 million
The X Factor and its BBC One rival Strictly Come Dancing both stepped up the pace this weekend.
Strictly Come Dancing tried to close the gap on its ITV1 Saturday night rival entertainment show, pulling in a high of 9.6 million viewers compared to last week’s 8.2 million. However, The X Factor also gained more viewers and strengthened its lead.
Saturday evening’s show, which saw the remaining 10 acts sing alongside a full orchestra for Big Band night, attracted 12.5 million peak viewers – over a million more than its 11.3 million viewers last weekend.
As such, The X Factor manage to retain around a three million viewer ratings lead on Strictly Come Dancing. However, reports show that viewers are quickly switching to BBC One in ITV1’s ad breaks.
At 8.10pm, around 11.4 million viewers were watching The X Factor but this figure dropped to 9.3 million during the 8.15pm ad break. Viewing figures increase again once The X Factor is back on, but the commercial broadcaster will have sold ad space based on the higher figure, which could cause problems for ITV ad executives.
On Sunday, The X Factor pulled in an even higher 13.8 million peak viewers in the last fifteen minutes, when the last girl band in the competition Miss Frank were voted off. The hour-long programme, which also featured performances from Westlife and Michael Buble, picked up an impressive 13.3 million average viewers and a 47.8% audience share.
Aside from the ad-break competition with BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday evening, ITV1 had a good weekend. The channel had a peak run on Sunday evening with All Star Family Fortunes, The X Factor and Doc Martin, which pulled in over 8.6 million average viewers and a 33.8% share during the all-important 9pm to 10pm peak-slot.
On Saturday, ITV1 also held on to the peak share after The X Factor for the latest Piers Morgan’s Life Stories interview with Welsh singer Katherine Jenkins, which secured 4.6 million average viewers and a 23% share.
Friday night’s line up was also a hit – with Emmerdale, Coronation Street and the comedy drama Benidorm. Coronation Street peaked with more than 9.3 million viewers but Benidorm‘s 6.1 million peak viewers was enough to secure the highest ratings during the peak-hour.
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.