Donegal’s All-Ireland final showdown with Mayo was the SIXTH most-watched programme on RTE television in 2012.
The game pulled in a whopping 975,000 viewers as Jim McGuinness and his team triumphed for the first time since 1992’s All-Ireland final.
And that wasn’t counting half of Donegal who traveled to watch the game at Croke Park!
But it was the Late Late Toy Show which once again scooped top spot with an average audience of 1,453,000 viewers.
The second most-watched programme of the year was RTÉ Sport’s Euro 2012 coverage of Republic of Ireland v Croatia in June with 1,236,000 viewers and the Mrs Brown’s Boys Special on Christmas Day hit third spot with 1,068,000 viewers.
It was a very good year for RTÉ Drama as Love/Hate’s series finale in December became the fourth most-watched programme of the year with 1,034,000 viewers tuning in to see Darren’s betrayal by Nidge and his shock execution.
Fair City also made the Top 20 with an episode from January which saw 648,000 viewers tune in to see what happened in the aftermath of the revelations of Tommy and Jo’s affair. And Raw hit No 15 with the series finale in February as 704,000 viewers tuned in to see Pavel’s tragic demise.
Irish audiences loved RTÉ’s big entertainment programmes in 2012 as The Late Late Show made a second appearance in the Top 20 with the 50th Anniversary show in June hitting fifth spot with 1,028,000 viewers. Mrs Brown’s Boys made a second appearance in the list with the finale of the second series in February which was seventh with 909,000 viewers. The Eurovision Song Contest in May came in at tenth place with over 771,000 viewers. The Voice of Ireland had two spots on the list with 725,000 viewers for one of the blind auditions in February and 718,000 viewers for the results show in April, putting those shows in twelfth and thirteenth position. The Rose Of Tralee final had 695,000 viewers, putting it in sixteenth place.
Sport again proved very popular with Irish audiences with five of the Top 20 programmes of the year. As one might expect, the GAA All Ireland Finals featured strongly with The Sunday Game Live coverage of the All Ireland Senior Football Final (Mayo v Donegal) hitting sixth position with just under 975,000 viewers. The Sunday Game Live coverage of the All Ireland Senior Hurling Final (Kilkenny v Galway) came in at No 8 with just over 900,000 viewers. RTÉ Sport’s coverage of the RBS 6 Nations (Ireland v Wales) came in at No 20 with 648,000 viewers. And RTÉ Sport’s coverage of Katie Taylor’s history-making win at the London 2012 Olympics was the eleventh most-watched programme of the year with 754,000 viewers.
As ever Operation Transformation proved to be a ratings winner as the series finale attracted 673,000 viewers to make it No 18.
As might be expected, RTÉ News also featured in the top programmes of the year with 778,000 viewers tuning into the RTÉ News: Nine O’Clock on February 12th and 675,000 viewers the RTÉ Six-One News on January 3rd , putting them in ninth and seventeenth spots respectively.
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