Britain’s Got Talent tops Saturday ratings beating Eurovision

Simon Cowell’s talent show pulled in an average of 8.8 million viewers for ITV, compared to the 7.7m who watched Bonnie Tyler finish 19th in BBC One’s marathon four-hour broadcast. (itv)

Britain’s Got Talent beat the Eurovision Song Contest in last night’s TV ratings battle, according to early data.

Simon Cowell’s talent show pulled in an average of 8.8 million viewers for ITV, compared to the 7.7m who watched Bonnie Tyler finish 19th in BBC One’s marathon four-hour broadcast.

Eurovision peaked with 9.22m just before 11pm as votes poured in from across Europe, according to figures from broadcast consultancy Attentional. However, Britain’s Got Talent had 9.3m viewers at one point during the show.

The BBC should still be cheered by the results. The show attracted 230,000 more people than last year, when Engelbert Humperdinck could only manage second-to-last, and 35 per cent of people watching TV last night tuned in.

Britain’s Got Talent, which overlapped with Eurovision for 45 minutes on the TV schedule, took a noticeable hit. This week’s batch of auditions were watched by 1.74m fewer people than last Saturday, according to Digital Spy.

On the continent, Eurovision was a predictably popular TV choice. More than 8m people watched the show in Germany, while 65 per cent of all TV viewers in the Netherlands opted to watch the broadcast.

However, Italy and France both snubbed the contest, with 1.9m and 2.7m viewers respectively.