It was the mother of all reality shows but Big Brother made a low-key return to Channel 5 with fewer than 2 million viewers.
Big Brother: Timebomb, the 16th series of the show since it started on Channel 4 in 2000, had 1.8 million viewers, a 10% share of the audience from 10pm on Tuesday. The show saw contestant Simon Gross evicted from the house within hours of entering.
It was down 300,000 on the 2.1 million viewers who watched the opening episode of the last series, but matched its 10% share of the audience, and a long way down from the heady heights of nearly 7 million viewers who watched it launch on Channel 4 in 2006 (the series won by Pete Bennett).
However, it still did good business for Channel 5, up 115% on its three-month slot average. Spin-off show, Big Brother’s Bit on the Side, had 674,000 viewers (8.3%) from 11pm, up 75% on average.
Big Brother: Timebomb was up against Channel 4’s Paul Abbott cop drama No Offence, which was down nearly a million viewers on last week’s launch, to 1.6 million (7.9%) from 2.5 million (11.7%).
At the same time on BBC2, docusoap Wastemen – it does what it says on the bin – had 1.8 million viewers, 8.6% of the audience.
BBC1’s 24 Hours in the Past – the most random collection of participants in the BBC’s weakest historico-reality-doc-thing yet, according to the Guardian – had 3 million viewers (14.6%).
It was up against ITV’s coverage of Barcelona’s Champions’ League win over Bayern Munich, which was watched by 3.5 million viewers (17.2%) from 7.30pm.
