TV viewers underwhelmed by Tottenham defeat and soap-clash
Thursday brought a suspiciously quiet night for UK television audiences, with the biggest show of the day being watched by less than 6 million people.
Being a glass-half-empty kind of show, poor old EastEnders (BBC One, 7:30pm) celebrated a half-hearted victory last night as – while it did manage to take the day’s top spot – the actual audience numbers were seriously affected by a clash with a rival soap.
An average audience of 5.9 million viewers watched as Ronnie Mitchell had yet another bad day in which she was once again forced by the producers to scream in anguish and cry in despair to the scriptwriting Gods (her contract dictates that a traumatic event must befall the character in every scene she appears).
An audience share of 28% tuned in to see baby Lexi get snatched away from Ronnie in a pretty sadistic revenge plot. In fairness to the perpetrator, the Mitchell sister did squish his brother Carl White (formally EastEnders‘ premium pre-watershed hard man) in a car crusher – as is standard practice for departing characters in Albert Square these days.
The London soap’s main beef last night was the fact that the first half of the shouty drama overlapped directly with the last 15 minutes of an hour long Emmerdale (ITV). Kicking off earlier than usual at 6:45pm, the soap about sleepy village life focused on young Belle Dingle as she buried the best friend she had murdered the week earlier.
Despite wooing viewers with a particularly intriguing storyline about Belle: The BFF Slayer, Emmerdale was also hit hard by the scheduling folly with the football officially to blame. 5.3 million viewers took a trip to the treacherous Yorkshire Dales, resulting in a 27% share and the day’s third biggest audience.
Straight up afterwards was the latest Live UEFA Europa League Football game at 7:45pm which saw Tottenham face off against visiting Portuguese team Benfica at White Hart Lane. Kicking off at 8:05pm, the entire coverage was watched by an average audience of 3.1 million viewers, peaking to a paltry 3.6 million viewers in the final 15 minutes as the home team’s 3-1 defeat was confirmed.
Up against the football in the 8pm slot was the show that could single handedly destroy Angela Rippon’s legacy: the gormless Holiday Hit Squad (BBC One, 8pm) which was watched by 3.4 million viewers.
Over on BBC Two, Si and Dave’s latest epic jaunt at the expense of the taxpayer took in a 10% share as The Hairy Bikers’ Asian Adventure (8pm) was watched by 2.1 million viewers, while Channel 4’s responsible programme, The Hoarder Next Door (8pm), secured 1.7 million viewers.
Later at 9pm, the prime time slot saw BBC One go all Channel 4 with the second part of slightly silly and condescending documentary Rich, Famous and Hungry. Scientifically designed by crafty TV people to instigate some kind of internet reaction, the show saw ghastly creatures like talented journalist well-connected human being Rachel Johnson volunteered to spend some time with the great unwashed, expressing her absolute horror in cringy pieces-to-camera every few minutes.
3.4 million viewers lapped up the clashing of worlds, which somehow has something to do with Sports Relief, resulting in a 17% share and the biggest audience in the time slot. The unsubtle peek into modern poverty generated 12,588 tweets, the third most tweeted about show of the day.
Meanwhile Channel 4 took a break from sensationalist fly-on-the-wall documentaries by… placing a camera on the wall of the International Space Station.
Delving back into the heavens with the second episode from its Live from Space season, Astronauts: Houston We Have a Problem (9pm) took a look at the intense training the glorified handymen have to undergo in order to keep their home in orbit and stopping it from crashing down into the atmosphere.
Only 1.4 million viewers tuned in to learn that their jobs weren’t too demanding, comparatively, resulting in a 7% share.
Unusually for a Thursday night, BBC Two offered up a celluloid treat in the shapely form of the Michelle Williams-starring My Week with Marilyn (9pm). The anarchic caution-be-dammed piece of scheduling also brought in 1.4 million viewers, which translated to a 7% share.
Over on Channel 5, deeply unhappy person Alex Polizzi was back to sniff around carpets, run fingers over dust piles and generally turn her nose up at hard working people in the joyful The Hotel Inspector (9pm). This week, Alex was acting unpleasant in Staffordshire, pulling 1.3 million viewers into her world of hard talking, no nonsense shtick.
The Social TV Analytics report is a daily leaderboard displaying the latest social TV analytics Twitter data from SecondSync. The table shows the top UK TV shows as they are mentioned on Twitter, which MediaTel has correlated with the BARB overnight programme ratings for those shows (only viewable to BARB subscribers).
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. Overnight data supplied by TRP are based on 15 minute slot averages. This may differ from tape checked figures, which are based on a programme’s actual start and end time.