The Simon Cowell- and Sharon Osbourne-fronted show, which started at 9pm, brought in an average of 5.8m viewers, a 27% share of the total audience, who witnessed the exit from the show of Page 3 glamour model Michelle Marsh and more sparks between .
'Big Brother' pulled in an average 4.8m viewers, or a 22% audience share, with housemates Lea, Richard and Sezer nominated for eviction from the house.
The 'X-Factor: Battle of the Stars' managed to achieve a high of 6.4m, or a 30% share of viewers at 10pm, half-an-hour before the show's end, while 'Big Brother' reached its 5.2m peak at 9.45pm, capturing a 23% share.
BBC Two nature programme 'Springwatch' managed to hook a 3.5m audience, a 17% share of the audience at 8pm, but the channel could not maintain the figure for the following programme, the adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst's Booker Prize-winning novel 'The Line of Beauty' slipping to an average audience of 1.7m, an underachieving 7.5% share of the total audience.
BBC One did not fare much better with documentary 'Life of Grime' hardly cleaning up in terms of audience, pulling in 3.7m, a 17% share, in its 9pm slot. This was followed by 'Traffic Cops', which managed to arrest a potential slide, adding 1.4m to record 4.1m viewers, or an 18% share of the audience.
However, the non-commercial channels were not the real losers in the jostle for ratings. That dubious honour went to Five, which only managed to cross the magic 1m viewer line once throughout the whole day, with Australian soap opera 'Home and Away' capturing 1.5m viewers at 6pm, a 10% share of the total TV audience.
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