Big Brother Eviction Draws 5.6 Million Viewers
A peak of more than 5.6 million viewers tuned in to Channel 4 on Friday night to watch Big Brother contestant Vanessa leave the house in the first conventional eviction so far in the programme’s current series.
Unofficial overnight figures from BARB show that an average of 5.36 million viewers watched the eviction special, which saw presenter Davina McCall interview the ousted Vanessa live just before 10:30pm.
Ratings for the show are higher than the average for the series for far, but are dwarfed by those achieved by the so-called Big Brother fight, which saw almost 7 million viewers tune in to watch exiled contestants Emma and Michelle return to the main house after five days in a secret bedsit (see Ofcom Investigating Big Brother As Over 100 Complain).
However, comfort will be gleaned from an overall increase in viewing figures and share across the board for the current series of Big Brother, including spin-off programmes such as Big Brother’s Little Brother and Big Brother’s EFourum.
Channel 4 claims an average audience of 4.7 million and a 23% share for the series so far. Peak-time evening shows have attracted an average share of 45% amongst 16-34 year-olds, a rise of 7% on the same period last year.
Viewing of the program’s live stream on E4 has also been increased this year, currently averaging 123,000 viewers during the day, an increase of 30% on last year and an average of 258,000 at night (up to 2am), a massive 48% rise on last year.
Channel 4 also reports increased performance of its Big Brother spin-off programming, which has ballooned this year with the creation of discussion programmes and Diary Room Uncut complementing its more established Big Brother’s Little Brother strand.
Big Brother‘s ever popular website has also performed well on the back of the programme’s broadcast success. The site has secured the top spot as the most visited Big Brother site to date with almost 130,000 page impressions and nearly five million unique users so far, an increase of 161% on visitor numbers last year.
The success of this year’s series will be music to Channel 4’s ears, especially considering the programme is only half way through its ten-week run. Concerns had been raised over the future of Channel 4’s schedules, with the loss of populist programmes such as Friends, Frasier and Sex and The City earlier this year hitting ratings hard (see Channel 4 Hits Ratings High With Friends And Big Brother).
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