Topless Mud-Wrestling Boosts Big Brother Viewing

Channel 4 saw ratings surge last night as a peak of more than 5 million reality-TV fans tuned in to Big Brother to watch the inebriated housemates engage in a topless mud-wrestling contest.

Unofficial overnight figures from BARB show that a peak of 5.2 million viewers watched the programme, which saw Geordie mortgage advisor, Michelle, attempt to avoid tonight’s eviction by inciting the other contestant to strip off.

Audiences for last night’s show were above the average for the series so far, but were someway short of the 7.2 million peak achieved by the launch of this year’s reality-TV extravaganza at the end of last month (see Channel 4 Hits Ratings High With Friends And Big Brother).

The latest figures show that an average of more than 4 million viewers tuned in to Big Brother to watch last night’s saucy capers, which attracted an impressive 23% share of the available audience to Channel 4 between 10pm and 10:50pm.

ITV only managed to average 3.3 million viewers during the same time-slot, with a combination of The Best Of Tarrant On TV and the recently relaunched ITV News securing a 14.6% share of the available audience.

BBC One outperformed both ITV and Channel 4 last night with an average audience of 5.1 million people tuning in to watch a repeat of crime drama Silent Witness and the BBC News. The channel commanded a healthy 20.8% share of viewing between 10pm and 10:50pm.

The latest series of Big Brother appears to be performing well for Channel 4 and ratings have so fare averaged around 4.6 million viewers. Big Brother’s Little Brother is also pulling in the viewers with presenter Dermot O’Leary helping to attract an average audience of 1.7 million reality-TV fans to the show last week.

Channel Four: 020 7396 4444 www.channel4.co.uk

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