Olympics Opening Ceremony peaks with 27m viewers in UK
Published Jul 28 2012, 09:45 BST | By Paul Millar
The Olympics Opening Ceremony was watched by 27 million viewers in the UK at its peak last night, early reports suggest.Britain's star-studded event, which featured appearances from Mr Bean and James Bond, shot to an astronomical high at 9.50pm on BBC One (26.9m) and in 3D on BBC HD (100k), Broadcast says.
© PA Images / Owen Humphreys/PA Wire
Nearly 90% of the viewing audience stuck with the Ceremony as it reached its closing stages after midnight, signalling a record audience for that time of night.
Digital Spy's initial data from Attentional indicates that Danny Boyle's live spectacular averaged 23.02m (82.7%) between 9pm and 12.50am. The figures do not account for those who watched online, on Eurosport, Sky Sports or on big screens.
Overnight figures suggest that the Olympics Opening Ceremony may become one of the UK's most-watched broadcasts of all time when official BARB data is released in a week's time.
The Olympics countdown logged 10.08m (44.8%) on BBC One between 7pm and 9pm, while Olympic Breakfast had an impressive 1.71m (39%) between 6am and 9.15am.
BBC One was rewarded with a huge all-day share of 52.7% - five times more than its closest competitor ITV - as well as a primetime average of 65.8%.
Predictably, ratings on other channels suffered, with Big Brother falling to an all-time low of 614k (1.9%) on Channel 5 between 9pm and 10.30pm. The Bachelor followed with 242k (0.9%).
Meanwhile, The Million Pound Drop mustered 272k (3.1%) on Channel 4 and Gardeners' World secured BBC Two's highest rating with 1.26m (4.9%) at 8.30pm.
BARB ratings data supplied by Attentional
Watch celebrities discuss their favourite Olympic sports with Digital Spy below:
These figures are somewhat just an estimate. Its hard to place the event into the ratings chart because viewing habits have changed since 1966 1986 and 1996 when viewing figures peaked. 27 million in todays figures is massive and would have surpassed other peaks had the olympics been broadcast in a different era. Its not the complete picture to say that it was beaten by the world cup finals or fools and horses or eastenders christmas special etc.
July 30th 2012 at 3:35am
Why so many ethnic people in the pre and post indutrial revolution scenes when they ere not in the country then. They arrived with mass immigration with The Windrush...Quite rightly that arrival was shown in the ceremony...However you cannot have Ethnics used in the earlier scenes if they didnt arrive till The Windrush. So was it a factual erroror as has been suggested since in the press, or purely poliical correct/positive discrimination castng. To be frank,you cant have both. Either have PC casting and flood the cast with ethnics,or celebrate The Windrush and show the arrival of the ethnic massimmigraion to the UK and then use them in the scenes that follow. It does seem a shame that historical acuracy was ignored because of a posible Danny Boyle/PC/BBC, agenda. Lovely show apart from that spoiling things. Do one or the other but you can't do both. Mass Ethnic mmigration either strated historically with the Windrush or it didnt. If not then show te large influx of Chinese in the 60's or The Hugenoes when they expoloded in the East End...
July 29th 2012 at 11:23pm
Yeah, and during the Industrial Revolution; people didn't pick up and carry away grass, chimney's didn't rise from the ground and we didn't all crawl out from beneath a tree. It was quite clearly a representation of the Industrial Revolution by modern-day Brits, not an exact depiction.
July 30th 2012 at 12:24am(+1 like)
Big Brother's Live eviction should of been on the Thursday (the day before), they've done it before and so should of done it again. Channel 4 would have done it, but of course Channel 5 are to stuban to do such things. Shame really, would of liked to of seen the eviction live on the Thursday or Saturday or Sunday.
July 29th 2012 at 5:29pm
The figures that have been going around do not include people watching in pubs, online through the bbc website, late night work places, public places, hyde park, hospitals, prisons, music festivals on big screens or in 3D.
Media estimates are that around 11 million extra people in the UK watched the ceremony when all the above is added together.
The real viewing figure in the UK for the ceremony is around 39 million. (27 million peak in homes + 11 million watching in the places named above).
In my view the London Olympic 2012 opening ceremony when you include viewing in public places is the most watched television event of all time in the United Kingdom with around 39 million watching live on BBC1.
Including public place viewing this completely smashes the previous record of the 1966 world cup final.
This is around 2/3 of everyone in Britain watching BBC1 live (excluding a few thousand watching on eurosport). This is a major major success for the BBC
July 29th 2012 at 12:11pm(+2 likes)
It was a bore
July 29th 2012 at 2:13am