Survivor slides in the ratings

Jason Deans
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday May 23 2001 11.28 BST

Survivor

There was more Survivor ratings gloom for ITV yesterday, as on its second night the big budget reality show attracted just 4.4m viewers.

It was thrashed in the ratings by Holby City on BBC1, which got 6.2m viewers.

But more embarrassingly, Survivor was only 1m ahead of the Chelsea Flower Show on BBC2.

Last night's edition of Survivor, which went out between 8.30pm and 9pm, was the first to feature John Leslie interviewing an evictee from the show.

Nick Carter had been built up to be the equivalent of Big Brother's "Nasty" Nick Bateman, before he was the first contestant booted off Survivor island at the end of Monday's opening episode.

But viewers were obviously not too interested in watching a man who they had hardly got to know before he was voted off the show, with only 4.4m - 21% of the available audience - tuning in, according to unofficial overnights.

That was more than 2m down on the audience for the opening Survivor episode on Monday night.

Last week in the same slot the Bill attracted 5.8m viewers.

Survivor lost out to BBC1's medical drama, Holby City, which had 6.2m viewers and a 31% audience share.

But both BBC1 and ITV almost certainly lost viewers to BBC2's Chelsea Flower Show coverage between 8.30pm and 9pm.

Alan Titchmarsh and the gang attracted 3.4m viewers and 17% share of the available audience.

Brookside on Channel 4 had 1.7m viewers in the same timeslot.

Channel 5 showed the latest in its series of royal documentaries, about Princess Diana, between 8pm and 9pm.

Princess Diana had 1.4m viewers and a 7% audience share.

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