TV Overnights: Men’s 200m semi-final wins 10.5m viewers

Last night’s BBC One coverage of the men’s 200m semi-final with Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake attracted a peak audience of 10.5 million viewers at 8.15pm.

The evening athletics coverage from the Olympic stadium, presented by Gary Lineker, banked nine million average viewers and a 40.6% audience share between 7pm and 10pm.

BBC One’s Olympics dominance continues to lead the TV ratings. The channel averaged 2.4 million viewers in the morning slot, more than three million viewers before lunch, then 2.3 million in the early afternoon slot and 3.1 between 4pm and 6pm.

BBC Two also enjoyed decent ratings yesterday, with its Olympics 2012 programme pulling in 1.4 million peak viewers; Coast 1.3 million; Restoration Home 1.7 million; Vexed 1.1 million; and Olympics 2012 (10pm to 10.40pm) 1.2 million viewers.

ITV1’s Wednesday night line-up featured Emmerdale, The Lakes and a repeat of Agatha Christie’s Poirot.

In the 8pm to 10pm slot, Poirot started on a high of two million viewers on ITV1 but settled on 1.9 million average viewers and a 8.3% audience share. The Lakes also pulled in two million peak viewers, while Emmerdale reached a peak audience of 4.8 million viewers.

Meanwhile, Channel 4’s peak-hour show 24 Hours in A&E picked up 2.5 million peak viewers and a 9.4% average audience share between 9pm and 10pm.

At the same time, Channel 5’s Big Brother struggled to reach a million viewers with a 4.1% average share.

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.