Nearly 5 million viewers watched Boyhood, Eddie Redmayne and Julianne Moore win at the Bafta film awards on BBC1 on a night of ratings gloom for ITV.
The Baftas had 4.9 million viewers, a 24.1% share, from 9pm on Sunday, up on last year’s 4.6 million (22%) when 12 Years a Slave won best film, but down on a 10-year high of 5.4 million in 2013.
Back then, the film awards lost out to ITV’s Mr Selfridge, which had 6 million viewers. However, the declining fortunes of the ITV drama meant this year the Baftas won out as Mr Selfridge was watched by just over 4 million viewers (17.1%), also from 9pm.
ITV fell to an 8.6% share of the audience across the whole of Sunday, around two-thirds of its typical audience, neck and neck with BBC2, which also had an 8.6% share.
ITV suffered at the hands of a strong Sunday night BBC1 line-up that also included Countryfile, with 7.6 million viewers from 7pm, and another 8.8 million viewers for Call the Midwife, from 8pm.
Its difficulties were compounded by BBC2’s Top Gear, which weighed in at 8pm with 5.4 million viewers, a 20.3% share, followed by Dragons’ Den with 2.5 million (10.6%) from 9pm. BBC1 had the biggest all-day share, with 21.2% of the audience, marginally up on average.
Other ITV shows included All Star Family Fortunes, watched by 2.3 million viewers (8.8%) from 8.15pm, and 621,000 (4.2%) for a repeat of the Perspectives strand featuring Lenny Henry on Shakespeare from 10.15pm.
The semi-final of Channel 4’s The Jump had just under 2 million viewers from 7pm. The second part of C4’s Guy Martin documentary, Our Man in India, was watched by 2.2 million viewers (9.4%) at 9pm.
All ratings are Barb overnight figures, including live, +1 (except for BBC channels) and same day timeshifted (recorded) viewing, but excluding on demand, or other – unless otherwise stated. Figures for BBC1, ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel 5 generally include ratings for their HD simulcast services, unless otherwise stated
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