Britain’s Got Talent drew more than 10 million viewers for the third week in a row, making it the highest-rating entertainment show of the year and ITV’s best rated programme.
Saturday night’s show, which included a dog that can hypnotise people and a hula-hoop specialist, attracted an average audience of 10.46 million viewers.
The third episode of the ninth series of Simon Cowell’s talent show recorded a five-minute peak audience of 11.9 million, and drew a huge 48.7% share of the total TV audience between 8pm and 9.15pm.
Saturday night’s average audience of almost 10.5 million viewers puts BGT just behind one of BBC1’s Eastenders live shows, where the killer of Lucy Beale was revealed, as the most-watched show on UK TV so far this year.
The first two shows in the latest series of BGT managed average audiences of 10.1 million each.
BGT’s average audience on Saturday was up 400,000 viewers on the second show and the corresponding episode of last year’s series.
ITV had a strong Saturday night with the third outing of obstacle course game show Ninja Warrior UK managing 4.56 million viewers, over 850,000 more viewers than tuned in to the show’s second outing.
Ninja Warrior UK managed a 25% share of the total TV audience between 7pm and 8pm.
However, sports panel show Play to the Whistle once again failed to benefit from being scheduled immediately after BGT, attracting an average of 3.1 million viewers and a 15.9% share between 9.15pm and 10pm.
Ratings for BBC1’s Atlantis remain underwater with just 2.5 million viewers tuning, a 12.6% share of the total television audience between 7.45pm and 8.30pm.
