ITV Drops Wrestling As Ratings Hit The Floor

ITV has axed its high profile Celebrity Wrestling after just three weeks, citing an ever declining audience share as the reason for its demise.

The show, pitted against BBC1’s Dr Who, suffered from the offset, with its debut appearance drawing a peak of 3.8 million although the programme’s audience regularly waned, dipping below the 3 million mark on several occasions. Meanwhile, the Corporation’s iconic sci-fi adventure drew a peak of 6.8 delivering a crushing blow to ITV (see BBC Pins ITV In Saturday Wrestling Showdown).

Ratings for the show’s second and third outings were similarly dismal, with the second airing on 30 April, forming part of ITV’s worst Saturday on record, when none of its prime-time offerings, including Hit Me Baby One More Time, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and Hell’s Kitchen drew an audience over 4 million.

The show’s fourth outing this Saturday will go ahead as scheduled, according to ITV, although it will now not be allowed to complete its planned eight-week run. The show’s slot next week slot will be filled with a Star Wars film, ITV confirmed, although it is not yet known what will take the programmes place in the long term.

A spokeswoman for ITV explained: “Despite a strong start, bringing a large share of younger viewers to ITV1, we have seen that share fall in the last couple of weeks and have decided to take Celebrity Wrestling out of the schedule. Kate Thornton and the team did a great job in what turned out to be a very competitive slot in the Saturday night schedule.”

The decision to drop Celebrity Wrestling echoes ITV’s decision to cull several peak-time reality TV shows last year, in order to avoid a continued slump in viewing figures (see ITV Drops Peak-Time Shows To Avoid Viewing Slump).

However, ITV has invested a substantial amount of time and money in promoting Celebrity Wrestling, including the creation of a red button application from interactive TV developer, Pushbutton, unveiled just weeks ago to link viewers to a games service, where they could play a video game based on the show (see Pushbutton Provides Interactive For Celebrity Wrestling).

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