Broadcasters who don't have any World Cup rights are having a bit of a tough time of it, ratings-wise at the moment. Channel 4, however, has been mounting something of a fightback.
Broadcast magazine reports today that the non-terrestrial channels have suffered a drop in audience share of 9% compared with the same period last year.
Channel 4 last night, however, took advantage of a quiet World Cup day to split Big Brother in half, wrapping it around a new series of the F Word with Gordon Ramsay, and topping the evening off with a double bill of Desperate Housewives, leading up to the series finale. This is all part of a World Cup damage limitation exercise that has also included "Double Deal" week - running Deal or No Deal in peak time as well as the afternoon.
The overnight ratings will tell us later today whether it paid off, but caused a number of practical problems. The first half of Big Brother had to be heavily bleeped because it was pre-watershed (8pm to 8.30pm). And the first half-hour of the revamped F-Word (8.30pm to 9pm) also had to be heavily bleeped as well (which kind of defeated the object). To allow unbleeped Ramsay post-9pm, C4 had to cut in with a warning from the continuity announcer about the language.
For this viewer, it was all a bit of a muddle. I was annoyed that Big Brother was split in two, and the new-format F-Word was a total mess. Ratings for the first series weren't that great so producers have introduced a game-show element whereby amateur chefs cook for Ramsay's "restaurant" customers, who then decide whether they want to pay the bill or not. But the amateurs were introduced so swiftly that we had no idea who they were, and therefore didn't care how well they fared. What a guddle, as they say in Aberdeenshire.
What's the betting that C4 wishes it had bought the format of Hell's Kitchen from ITV as well as the presenter?
