Thanks. Not a bad start although a big gap between average and peak, suggesting it started pretty low (not a surprise given the daylight and warm weather). It seems to have gone down well though so it could hold that.

Very consistent for Channel 4. McCoys last National would have been quite a hook yesterday. I wonder if there will be a serious attempt by the BBC to get the showpiece racing back?

Thats a good rating for first show,think it will increase in weeks to come.Proper Saturday night telly.

To be fair The Grand National gets a fair bit of promotion from the BBC with news reports during the week. It's a big event and it's good to know it hasn't suffered as a result of the move to C4.

Also I'm not sure where the myth has come from. Peaks since move to C4 are 8.9m, 8.5m, and 8.8m.

2008 peak was 10.1 million, 2011 was 8.8 million and 2013, the last on the BBC, was 10.89 m

Fun fact: last night's BGT rated higher than any episode of the most recent series of The X Factor, The Voice or Strictly Come Dancing, with the sole exceptions of Strictly's final and its Blackpool special.

Play to the Whistle - 3.3m 15.8%
Atlantis 2.5m 12.4%
In It To Win It 2.5m 11.4%

Thunderbirds 302k 5.5% (ITV only, don't have CITV rating), about 200k higher than the other kids shows before and after it.

Atlantis and IITWI on 2.5 million thats incredibly low isnt it.

Pretty weak start for Play To The Whistle. With the BGT lead-in I think they'd have wanted 4m. It had an easier slot than Ninja Warrior but rated worse.

Horrible for Atlantis. I thought it would at least break 3m. Also horrible for In It To Win It. It normally holds up better than that. Should have been above 3m.

Not sure what to make of Thunderbirds. It looks horrible but then it did better than most kids stuff does. I guess ITV are making their money on international distribution with this one.

BBC 1
19:45: Atlantis - 2.57m (12.4%)
20:30: National Lottery: In It to Win It - 2.58m (11.4%)
21:20: Casualty - 4.18m (20.1%)

BBC 2
19:30: Golf - 1.40m (8.0%)

ITV
19:00: Ninja Warrior UK - 3.68m
20:00: Britain's Got Talent - 9.58m (43.2%), +1 - 551k (2.6%)
21:20: Play to the Whistle - 2.92m (14.0%)

Channel Four
18:40: Film: Independence Day - 1.03m (5.1%)
21:20: Film: I Give It a Year - 1.00m (5.5%)

Channel Five
22:10: CSI - 915k

ITV 2
21:20: Britain's Got More Talent - 1.45m (7.1%)

Source - DS

Great rating for Britain's Got More Talent.

Atlantis was always going to struggle. Up against a mammoth tv show, the break in the series and the fact that everyone knows that it's cancelled.

Play to the Whistle should have been higher.

It will be interesting to see where the peak fell for Ninja Warrior. It may have been towards the end when people were tuning in for BGT. If they liked what they saw, then perhaps the ratings will rise a little for next week. However 3.68 million is an ok start but not something to shout about just yet.

Casualty did decently there compared to BBC1's poor performance earlier on, taking advantage of Play To The Whistle's weakness.

As did Britain's Got More Talent which did very well indeed. That'll be about 1.7m with +1 based on how it normally does there!

ITV do incredibly well to keep BGT fresh and fun. No sob stories or continual arguments about judges. Most importantly it more than maintains its audience.
The complete opposite to the XF.

Good for BGT and BGMT. Poor start for both new shows, especially as Ninja Warrior had 15minutes against Atlantis too. Poor rating for what is an expensive show.

Well that will be the test. Im assuming that the peak is the BGT lead in period-next week will answer those questions to a degree. Warm weather though(if its there ofcourse) will probably inhibit any potential growth and will increasingly play a part in ratings. Ideally a few cooler blustery weekends will do wonders for ITV's brave new world. The BBC is offering nothing new and the stubbed out cigarette end of Atlantis is hardly a threat.

At best Atlantis/IITWI would be 3-3.5m so no surprise as far as I can see. Its a pretty poor BBC schedule - are they trying to cheer ITV up a bit?

Pointless and Casualty were well positioned by BBC One to knock the new programming and they did their jobs to perfection. Why try something new when you can watch year round stalwarts instead? It's ironic Coronation Street's biggest threat is MasterChef, the presence of which seems to be growing in the schedule every year.

Back to last night - Ninja Warrior performed better out of the two but in terms of building a schedule it's another failure, albeit an unfortunate one this time rather than through lack of effort.

Britain's Got Talent raw figure looks disappointing but when you consider the share and the fact it beat every episode of Strictly 2014 except Blackpool and the final then it doesn't look so bad at all.

More Talent did well for ITV2. Channel 4 had a good night and recorded another nice National peak though it's amazing that 2m less watch now it's on a different channel, probably because the BBC's promotion was far more indepth when they had it. Same with the FA Cup. The golf didn't perform too badly but, excluding +1, Channel 5 failed to hit 1m again on a Saturday night though CSI didn't disgrace itself.

Ouch!!

Truly awful ratings there for the Beeb.

Britain's Got Talent shows that if people want to watch something they will seek it out, even if they've avoided the channel for weeks.

It's a must see show.

Any news on what The Boat Race got ?

And Pointless Celebrities?

I doubt having 15 minutes against Atlantis will have made any difference. If the whole show had aired against it that would be a different story but the first 45 mins had decent enough competition with Pointless Celebs.

Not sure how expensive Ninja Warrior was as they didn't build the set themselves, it was flown in from another version of the show. They filmed the whole series within a few days too, so the arena costs will have been kept down. It's a decent bit more expensive than Play To The Whistle though, I'm sure! don't think 4m is a bad start but it isn't amazing either and it'll need to hold at that level. We shall see. The Whole 19 Yards launched around the same 4m or so back in 2010 and that got canned, but I think the difference was that ITV built the set for that themselves rather than importing one in. Also 4 million now is relatively better than 4 million was 5 years ago.

No - I'm merely saying that viewer voted awards are no more fair or unbiased than awards voted for by a panel.

Thanks-much prefer to see the ex +1 figures.

Tremendous stuff from BGT -it takes a lot to pull that kind of audience at any time of the year and it continues to do this in the newly released Springtime. Ok for NW-though its far from accepted and next week will be important for it. Play to the Whistle not looking good but BBC1(aside from the rump loyal Casualty audience) is dire. Arguably the Lottery's most popular format really looking threadbare there and well, Atlantis is shot at.
Having said that, its going to take something pretty substantial to knock BGT and perhaps we can allow the BBC some slack after a stunning quarter 1 and probably a six month sweep of primetime Saturday wins. They are holding out the white flag for the next couple of months it seems.