Mo Farah's Win Was Watched By More Than 17 Million People
It’s fair we’re rather big fans of the BBC’s coverage of the Olympics. Channel spanning and throughily engrossing, the BBC throwing their best and brightest at London 2012 has worked absolute wonders.
Not only has the coverage been universally fantastic, but the viewing figures have been suitably impressive.
Throughout the festival of sport, the figures have been breath-taking. While everyone expected the opening ceremony to get big figures, the 26.9 million viewers it attracted was still amazing.
It’s been the consistent high viewing though that’s made the bigger headlines. Fuelled by an unexpected confidence in Team GB’s athletes, droves of us have tuned in to events we just wouldn’t have before. Jessica Ennis got 16.3 million viewers. Mo Farah had 17.1 million watch take the gold. Christine Ohurugu raked in over 13.6 million viewers and Chris Hoy got over 10 million despite being on before the primetime evening slots.
It’s not just GB athletes though, as Usian Bolt and the 100m final attracted more than 20 million viewers and made ITV have its worst ever day of viewing percentages. The channel only managed to get a 4.8% share in all of Sunday’s TV viewing, which makes for sad viewing when compared with BBC 1’s 42.7% share.
The TV alone isn’t the only BBC source to get a big bump in viewers, as the channel’s online coverage of the Olympics has had a massive amount of viewers with the website having spiked at over 8 million viewers.
While BBC One may be getting the viewers in for The Olympics, their decision on what to do with both BBC 2 and 3 has been inspired. Making BBC3 run alternative London 2012 coverage has been a masterstroke, as well as getting the channel to run all day instead of it kicking off at 7pm as usual. The channels ratings have never been better.
BBC 2 though is the real genius. By simply moving a lot of BBC 1’s programing over to the sister channel, the Beeb have created the perfect lot of counter programming for all those allergic to the finest sporting event on Earth. Tired of all the sport, then just pop over to BBC2 for great selection of drama, documentaries and Homes Under The Hammer. Perfect planning by the BBC, even if the channel’s viewing figures might not reflect the genius.
With the BBC taking the opportunity to plug their upcoming clutch of big-budget British drama to these enormous audiences, they hope to keep the gravy train going for as long as possible really wish they don’t wake up with a big post-Olympics ratings withdrawal next week.
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith
Tagged in BBC Olympics TV London 2012