More than 4 million viewers watched David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg grilled by a studio audience in BBC1’s Question Time Election Leaders Special.
The 90-minute programme hosted by David Dimbleby attracted 4.3 million viewers, a 21.1% share, from 8pm on Thursday with a five-minute peak of 4.9 million.
Scheduled earlier than its traditional post-10pm news slot, it was up about 50% on Question Time’s typical audience and the same as the 4.3 million (20.5%) who watched BBC1’s Election Debate 2015 on 16 April.
That was the so-called “challengers” head to head which featured five party leaders but not David Cameron, who was willing to take part in only one leaders’ debate, on ITV, or Nick Clegg.
Both shows were down on the BBC leaders’ debate at the last election in 2010, featuring Cameron, Clegg and Gordon Brown, which drew 7.3 million viewers on BBC1, rising to 8.4 million when simulcasts on BBC News and Sky News were taken into account.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, the sole TV debate to feature all seven party leaders, broadcast on ITV on 2 April, was the most popular of all the pre-election TV programmes, with 7 million viewers, a 31% share.
But even that was down on ITV’s leaders’ debate in 2010, watched by 9.4 million (37%).
Last night’s Question Time special lost out to ITV’s Emmerdale, which drew just more than 5 million viewers (25.2%) from 8pm.
But it easily had the better of ITV’s Double Decker Driving School, which picked up 2.1 million viewers (10.5%) from 8.30pm, and ITV’s new series Fraud Squad, which could only manage 1.8 million (8.8%) from 8pm.
