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- MediaGuardian,
- Monday June 4 2001
Survivor
ITV's Survivor received a much-needed ratings boost on Friday night, with 6m tuning in to see model Sarah Odell talk about being voted off the show.
Friday night's morale-boosting 30-minute instalment of Survivor came after audiences had slumped by more than 2m to 4.4m on Thursday.
The evictee show, in which Odell was interviewed by John Leslie about her departure from Survivor island, screened the previous evening, had 6m viewers and a 29% audience share.
It was Survivor's best audience since its opening night on Monday May 21, when the first 60-minute eviction show drew 6.6m.
The improvement in Survivor's ratings will go some way to justifying ITV's insistence that the show would take up to three weeks to build a mass audience.
Survivor's revival also coincided with an up and down weekend in the ratings for rival reality show Big Brother.
The main Friday night edition, in which viewers saw Big Brother housemates Penny and Helen nominated for eviction and Josh voted for by the public as the person to replace the first evictee next Friday - drew 4.1m viewers - Big Brother's second highest rating so far - and a 27% audience share.
But earlier on Friday evening the regular daily update show managed just 2.6m viewers.
The repeat show on Saturday lunchtime drew 1m viewers - almost enough to topple Grandstand on BBC1, although the round up of the week's activities later on Saturday night - Big Brother: the Best Bits - drew a disappointing 1.8m and a 9% audience share.
But overall Big Brother ended its first full week with an average of 3.6m viewers and a 19% audience share - up from 3m and an 18% share at the same stage last year.
More than 50% of the show's audience has been made up of its key target demographic, 16 to 34-year olds.
The equivalent figure for Survivor's 60-minute eviction shows is 30%; while only 25% of the shorter evictee interview programme's audience has been made up of 16 to 34-year-olds.
MediaGuardian.co.uk special reports
