The third series of American Idol got off to a promising start on Friday night, early ratings data shows.

Some 800,000 viewers tuned in for the first three episodes - featuring auditions from New York, Atlanta and Houston - shown back-to-back on ITV2 from 8.30pm. The figure represented a 7.4% share of the audience in multichannel homes.

The ratings for the programme in the UK were a far cry from those in the US, however, where the audience averaged 30 million viewers.