Pop Idol Flops Online

ITV’s Pop Idol website failed to achieve the success of its TV parent and did not match up to the online version of Channel 4’s Big Brother, according to a survey from NetValue.

Figures show that 450,000 people visited the Pop Idol website during January 2002, an increase of nearly 550% on December’s visitor figures of 71,000, but down on the multi-media record held by the Big Brother website, which was visited by more than 700,000 unique users during its peak last July.

The Pop Idol final, which was shown on ITV1, attracted a peak of nearly 14 million viewers and generated 8.7 million votes (see Pop Idol Is A Hit For ITV), beating the record for telephone voting previously held by Big Brother. However, NetValue statistics show that only a small percentage of TV viewers voted online in the weeks leading up to the final, far fewer than voted for their favourite Big Brother contestant last summer (see 2.5 Million Watch Big Brother Online).

Of those that did visit the Pop Idol website over 54% were women and more than 58% were aged between 15 and 24, an age group that normally accounts for only 24.4% of all internet users. According to the figures, students accounted for almost 47% of Pop Idol’s online audience with professionals making up only 7%.

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