The five minute peak audience came at 9.25pm when Peacock, just 19-years-old, set a new Paralympic T44 100m record of 10.90 seconds, five hundredths of a second below his own personal best.
Including the Paralympic Extra live streams, the London 2012 audience peak was 6.7 million. It exceeded the previous record audience for Paralympic sport in the UK, which was Sunday (2 September) night’s 4.4 million for the 200m T44 final.
American Richard Browne took silver in a time of 11.03 seconds and Pistorius’ fellow countryman Arnu Fourie bagged bronze with 11.08.
Five time Paralympic champion Pistorius, who had stated publicly all week he preferred the longer 200 metre and 400 metre sprints, believing he has "moved away from the 100", could only manage fourth place.
However, the former champion, aged 25, was quick to congratulate Peacock after the race, hugging him on the track and saying afterwards: "We have seen the start of a great sprinter. Well done Jonnie and all the boys. He's still young and he's got a great future ahead of him."
Earlier in the evening, 20 year old Hannah Cockroft won gold for Team GB in the T34 200m final with a time of 31.90 seconds, watched by a peak audience of 4.1 million.
In what was quickly dubbed 'Thriller Thursday', David Weir made it a hat-trick of London 2012 Paralympic titles, after successfully defending his T54 800 metre crown, watched by a peak audience of 5.5 million.
From 9.10pm to 9.55pm, the live coverage of the Paralympic track and field made Channel 4 the most watched television channel in the UK.
Between 7.30pm to 11.00pm, The Paralympic Games 2012 Tonight averaged 3.5 million viewers, 17 percent share of the audience – the best performing peak time show of the Games so far.
The through-the-day Paralympics coverage helped Channel 4 average an 11.6 percent share across the day on Thursday – up +75% on the 12 month average.
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