AS IF IT hadn’t been a tough enough year for Nidge and the boys, they’ve now been beaten by a bunch of kids.
Ratings figures show that Friday night’s Late Late Toy Show was the most-watched programme on Irish television so far this year, ahead of last month’s season finale of Love/Hate.
Almost 1.4 million people watched the Friday broadcast, which featured 231 kids, more than 330 toys, Robbie Keane and Domhnall, and Ryan Tubridy holding everything together.
Love/Hate can’t be too disappointed though; The Toy Show juggernaut is frequently the most popular programme in the country each year – plus RTE’s crime drama got 1,007,500 viewers with the finale of series four on 11 November.
RTE said this afternoon that more than 120,000 people streamed the show on the RTE player between Friday night and Sunday. It was a hit on social media too: there were more than 100,000 mentions of the show on Facebook and over 52,000 tweets about it.
Meanwhile, TV3′s inaugural rival toy show, which was broadcast at 8pm on Friday, didn’t do too badly either with 353,000 viewers tuning in, making it the most watched programme in its time slot.
The executive producer of The Late Late Show said the programme is a “national event which has become a huge part of our culture”.
“We have also been overwhelmed by the feedback from viewers who were watching from all over the world,” said Kathy Fox.
We pushed Ryan in ways he hasn’t been pushed before, but he didn’t disappoint. He was very brave, a little bit bold but absolutely brilliant.
All of the toys featured on the show were donated to various charities afterwards.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say