TV Overnights: World Cup coverage dominates the weekend ratings

Coverage of the latest World Cup 2010 games dominated the ratings this weekend, starting with the England v Algeria match on Friday evening.

ITV1’s big Friday night game scored an impressive high of almost 19 million viewers, despite ending up a goal-less draw.  The England v Algeria match secured 12.8 million average viewers and a 52.2% audience share for ITV1 from 7pm onwards.

On Saturday, ITV1 also pulled in a high of 3.4 million viewers and a 29.4% average share for the Holland v Japan midday match, and 6.2 million peak viewers and a 22.9% share for the Cameroon v Denmark evening game.

However, BBC One banked the peak audience for the majority of the day with it’s Saturday morning line-up of cookery shows, the Ghana v Australia afternoon match, Total Wipeout, Doctor Who and its evening film Firewall.

It was a similar story on Sunday, with BBC One dominating the day times ratings with the exception of ITV1’s World Cup coverage.  The Italy v New Zealand match attracted over 5.1 million peak viewers and a 33.6% average share for ITV1 between 2.30pm and 5pm.

However, on the whole, BBC held the top spot yesterday with The Andrew Marr Show, The Politics Show, as well as both Match of the Day Live games: Slovakia v Paraguay and Brazil v Ivory Coast.

The final game of the weekend – Brazil v Ivory Coast – pulled in more than 8.8 million peak viewers and a 30.5% average audience share during the Sunday evening prime time slot.  Meanwhile, ITV1’s peak-time drama Lewis picked up 4 million viewers and a 15.6% average share between 8pm and 10pm.

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.