Only The Strong Survive: Bad News For ITV Reality Show
ITV has announced that its £10m reality TV show Survivor (see Review: Survivor) is to be reduced to just one episode a week as viewing figures continue to dwindle. Currently Survivor airs four times a week with one hour shows on Monday and Thursday at 8pm and thirty minute shows on Tuesday and Friday. Next week ITV will show one episode on Monday at 9pm and an episode of behind the scenes footage called Survivor Unseen at 8.30pm on Tuesday. This pattern will be continued, although Survivor Unseen will move to a post News at Ten slot in the following weeks.
David Liddiment, ITV director of programmes today described the programme as “a bold commission for ITV” and admitted that its audience has “taken longer than anticipated to build.” He concluded “We are changing the scheduling to give Survivor the best possible chance to grow.” Mondays night’s episode of the reality TV show attracted just 5.2m viewers and a 25% audience share, according to unofficial figures, adding fuel to speculation that the show could be the biggest let down of the summer.
Speculation over the decision to reduce the amount of episodes increased today after Survivor was beaten in the ratings battle for the first time by rival reality show Big Brother (see Big Brother Beats Survivor In Audience Size For First Time). 4.1m viewers tuned in to Channel 4 yesterday at 10pm to hear the nominations for eviction, while only 3.9m watched Survivor.
The show was first aired in the US last summer and enjoyed massive success with the biggest ever summer rating for a single show. However, in the UK the show has failed constantly to reach its predicted mark of 10m viewers with the introductory episode, which was shown on 21 May in the 10pm prime time slot (see Survivor Peaks At 6.9m For Debut Episode), attracting only 6.83m viewers.
TV Times features writer Olly Grant explained: “Survivor is a good programme but it’s failed to capture the public imagination. It should have been massive, ITV were hoping for a rolling stone effect with the show getting more popular as it went along, but I think they made an initial mistake by not giving the characters enough time to develop. The first person was evicted after an hour and nobody knew who they were.”
Producers of the show were keen to avoid comparisons with reality rival Big Brother but ITV’s big budget offering, which cost £9m to produce, seems to be failing to inspire audiences. Grant said: “I think compared to Survivor, Big Brother is boring but is more realistic and allows the contestants to develop a sense of personality. Survivor was so successful in America because it was like nothing they’d ever seen before but after Big Brother, here in the UK we’re used to the back stabbing element of reality TV.”
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