ITV’s Zone of Champions welcomes 1.7m

• Saturday

The opening episode of Spelthorne Community Television’s comedy clip show struggled against a 2.6m (15.9%) Saturday slot average.

The You’ve Been Framed-style show, in which hosts Jack Bullman and Nicky Brimble (aka John Thomson and Jessica Knappett) celebrate bizarre and wonderful sporting clips, struggled particularly with millennial viewers.

Share for the 25-34 age bracket almost-halved to 10.5% (80,000) of those watching TV at the time.

Viewers from the AB wealth demographic also tuned out, with share halving to 6.3% (160,000).

The six-parter struggled against recent ITV teatime gameshow openers, according to Barb data from overnights.tv

Small Fortune launched in the Saturday 7pm slot in February to 3.3m (17.7%), almost flat with April’s In For a Penny, which drew 3.4m (21.8%) in the slightly later 7.30pm-8pm slot.

Zone of Champions went up against the launch of BBC2’s Proms Encore (390,000 / 2.8%) magazine format, which was more than 100,000 shy of last year’s opening 520,000 (4.2%) in the same slot.

Zone of Champions was followed by the closing episodes of an ITV entertainment double, as Catchphrase (2.5m / 17.6%) and The Voice Kids (3.2m / 20.7%) both ended between 7.15pm-8pm and 8pm-9.45pm respectively.

The latter finished level with last year’s final but this series’ overall average (2.9m / 19.9%) was around 200,000 shy of that series’ 3.1m (18.3%). This year’s offering was played out on Saturday nights instead of being stripped.

The Voice Kids final comfortably defeated the closing episode of the second run of BBC1’s Killing Eve, which thrilled 2.1m (13.8%), level with last season’s finale.

The crime caper’s overall 2.4m (14.1%) series average was around 200,000 shy of last year’s (2.6m / 15.8%), with a third run currently in the works.

• Sunday

Comedian Ranganathan drew an upsurge of more than 300,000 viewers from last season’s opener as he hit up Zimbabwe for the second round of Misadventures.

Adults aged 35-44 were particularly intrigued, with share rising from 7.6% benchmark to 10.8% (220,000), while overall the episode managed to just top the 1.2m (6.2%) slot average.

Rumpus Media’s offering was preceded by the launch of wildlife two-parter Animals at Play, which entertained 1m (5.7%) between 8pm and 9pm.

Offspring Films’ opener was shy of Cities: Nature’s New Wild, which launched to 1.2m (6.3%) at the back-end of last year at the later time of 9pm.

• Friday

ITV’s Fox acquisition Lethal Weapon returned for a third and final series from 9pm-10pm with 1.7m (10.6%), around 800,000 shy of series two in the same slot last year. 

It went up against a new series of Eight out of Ten Cats Does Countdown (1.3m / 7.8%) on Channel 4.

This was followed up by The Lateish Show with Mo Gilligan, which fell from its opening 700,000 (5.4%) to 470,000 (3.9%) from 10pm-11.05pm