Tycoon Finishes On A Low

Last night saw the final episode of ITV1’s business reality show Tycoon, which finished with a peak of 1.4 million viewers (a 7.4% audience share).

The series, which had been seen as a contender to BBC One’s Apprentice, started out as an hour-long show on Tuesdays at 9pm but began with poor viewing figures – an average of just over 1.8 million adults watched the first episode – and never recovered (see Tycoon Fails To Impress For ITV1).

Tycoon was quickly pulled from the ITV1 peak time schedule because of its poor ratings and returned in a 10pm slot on Monday June 9, cut down from 60 minutes to a half-hour format.

Last night it all came to an end, as creator and host Peter Jones, one of the panellists on the BBC Two business show Dragon’s Den, watched Ian crowned the winner as the public warmed to his dream of being the sole UK import agent for micro radio controlled helicopters.

Tycoon was one of the ITV1 shows singled out by Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, when he said that ITV had a penchant for plagiarising successful BBC One formats such as Any Dream Will Do and The Apprentice (see BBC Director General Accuses ITV Of Plagiarism).

It was also the last episode of The Time Of Your Life on ITV1 last night, the drama about a woman dealing with life after waking from a coma. It had a peak of 4.1 million adults (a 20.8% audience share) in its 9pm slot.

Over on BBC One at the same time was Fight For Life, a real life medical drama which uses ground breaking computer-generated images to get inside the human body.

It picked up a peak audience of 3.8 million adult viewers (a 19.2% share) and an average of 3.6 stayed tuned throughout its hour-long running time.

Overnight data is available each morning in mediatel.co.uk’s TV Database, with all BARB registered subscribers able to view reports for terrestrial networks, ITV2 and Sky One.

ITV: 020 7843 8000 www.itv.com BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk