Despite the game's importance to England's progress and the Saturday afternoon start time, the match attracted a slightly lower average audience of 16.2m compared to the Ecuador second-round game, also broadcast on the BBC, which had a 4pm weekday start, but attracted an average of 16.3m viewers.
During the nerve-wracking match that saw Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard fail to score their penalites, BBC's Wimbledon coverage was shown on BBC Two, and ITV broadcast the Disney film 'Freaky Friday'.
Saturday's game gave the BBC a 76% of the total programme share, with ITV only getting a 29.6% share and attracting 6.1m viewers for the 8pm Brazil v France game, in which France won 1-0.
Audiences have clearly diminished since England's group game against Sweden, which recorded a peak audience of 20.9m viewers and an average of 18.8m, and was broadcast on ITV1 at 8pm.
The fall in audience figures for England matches does not take into account out-of-home viewing in pubs and bars. Sky publishes out-of-home figures monthly.
ITV will broadcast the Germany v Italy semi-final on Tuesday night, with BBC showing the France v Spain game on Wednesday.
The broadcasters will battle it out for ratings when both BBC and ITV show the World Cup final simultaneously on Sunday evening.
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