Channel 5 honcho Ben Frow has discussed the disappointing ratings of the latest season of Big Brother, admitting that the World Cup was a huge hurdle for it to overcome.
The summer series, which wrapped up with the controversial victory of Helen Wood last month, achieved an average of 1.57 million viewers a night; down by 330,000 on the previous year. Speaking at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, Frow even claimed that he doesn't want it to be the network's most popular show and acknowledged that in the future it will fall further.
"We knew this summer was gonna be tough, we were up against all that sport, it's actually done remarkably well I think," he said. "When I looked at our ratings report for, I think it was last week or the week before, Big Brother was the fourth most popular programme. That's how I want it. I don't want Big Brother to be number one.
"I always said Big Brother is a very important piece for us, and I love Big Brother – you can play it in various different ways. But if you are overreliant on Big Brother, when it does fall down – and one day it will decline further – the whole lot falls down around it. I want to have shows I can play throughout the year that do as well, if not better than Big Brother, and those are the shows we're creating at the moment, like Benefits Britain."
Big Brother winner Helen Wood (WENN)
He maintained, however, that the long-running reality show is the top-rated entertainment show on the network, with other attempts such as the awful Brian McFadden-fronted dating flop 'Stand By Your Man' being more of a "what was I thinking moment".
The current series of Celebrity Big Brother is the last to be shown under the franchise's current deal with Channel 5, but Frow has said that he expects to renew the deal for further Celebrity and 'main' editions in 2015.
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
