Survivor ratings fail to match hype

Amy Vickers
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday May 22 2001 12.04 BST

Survivor

It is one of the most hyped shows ever launched by ITV but early ratings show that the Survivor got off to a disappointing start last night, only narrowly beating BBC1's Clocking Off.

Viewing figures for the first episode, screened between 9pm and 10pm, did little to rock the ratings, pulling in just 6.6m - a 31% audience share.

This was an embarrassing 6.2% below ITV's average peaktime share of the audience.

Clocking off, which also went out between 9pm and 10pm, was barely affected by the over-hyped ITV show.

It still managed to pull in a respectable 5.9m viewers, a 28% audience share, only 2% less than the previous week when it was up against Davina McCall's new comedy, Sam's Game.

The introductory episode to Survivor, aired at 7pm for half an hour, also performed under par for ITV.

A week earlier ITV pulled in almost 10m viewers for the Emmerdale slot. But last night ITV had to be grateful with just 5.8m viewers for the Survivor preview - a 35% audience share.

This was despite almost two weeks of solid hype including trailers on TV and endless stories in both tabloids and broadsheets on the contestants and likely winners.

Over on BBC1 a Question of Sport gained viewers - probably because of Emmerdale fans switching over - ending up with a 34% share and 5.6m viewers.

Nevertheless ITV today insisted it was a "fantastic launch". A spokeswoman said: "We couldn't have hoped for anything better. It won its slot against the last episode of a very popular show.

"We never expected 10m on the first night although we hope it will build to this."

She added that ratings in America had doubled in the first three weeks - the show ended up gripping the nation with a record audience of 60m.

"You have got to remember that we introduced 16 strangers and a complicated gameshow to the audience and we are confident it will grow. It's already a massive talking point, making the front pages."

However, rival broadcasters were rubbing their hands with glee. One executive said: "It wasn't as if they were up against any big hitters. A Question of Sport practically beat it and Clocking Off hardly suffered."

Over on BBC2, Harry Enfield's TV show, shown between 9pm and 9.30pm, secured a 12% share, 2.2m viewers.

Channel 5's screening of Arnold Schwarzenegger's the Running Man also took viewers off ITV, ending up with an audience share of 11% or 1m viewers.

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