Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross documentary fails to excite viewers

by Darren Davidson, Brand Republic 06-Nov-08, 11:10

LONDON - A Five documentary about the scandal generated by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross' radio-show prank on 'Fawlty Towers' actor Andrew Sachs pulled in a lowly 982,000 viewers last night, according to unofficial overnight figures.

'Russell & Ross: What the F*** Was That All About?' took a 5.7% share of the audience from 10-11.05pm.

Five today announced it will follow the programme with a documentary on the break-up of Madonna's marriage to Guy Ritchie, 'Madonna & Guy: Where Did It All Go Wrong?'. The hour-long documentary will air on Wednesday, November 12 at 10pm.

BBC One's crime drama 'Silent Witness' won the 9pm slot with 6.3m viewers and a 27% share of the audience.

Five's travel series 'Paul Merton in India' chalked up an impressive 1.8m viewers and a 7.6% share of the audience across the 9-10pm slot.

BBC Two cult sci-fi series 'Heroes' had 1.8m viewers and a 7.4% share of the audience in the same slot.

Channel 4's experimental real-life documentary series 'The Family' weighed in with 1.8m viewers and a 7.9% share of the audience at 9pm. Channel 4+1 took the ratings up to 2.2m viewers and a 9.3% share of the audience.

ITV1 aired a spin-off programme from 'The Bill' about famous actors who had made appearances on the show at the outset of their careers in the prime-time slot.

'The Bill Made Me Famous' was watched by 2.6m viewers and an 11% share of the audience from 9-10pm.

Comments

Richard Galbraith - 06/11/2008

where do these viewer stats come from? 11% of the entire population of UK was watching slient witness last night? on bonfire night? just seems insane to me.

Martin Corcoran - 06/11/2008

Richard - where does it say in the story that the 11% of the population watched Silent Witness? Answer: no where. In fact the story says 11% of the audience watched the show. Audience is not the same thing as the entire UK population. Pretty dumb remark to bother typing notwithstanding that it should be a given (especially to people in the media industry) that ratings are based on who is watching the TV unless I am mistaken and BARB now go to the extraordinary length of finding out what the entire population is doing at any one moment when they compile their TV ratings.

Richard Galbraith - 06/11/2008

the population of the uk is roughtly 58 million people, if 6.3 million people are watching silent witness, that's roughly 11% of the population of the UK, so it's not a dumb thing to say, it's fact. Thanks for the heads up on barb however, i've just looked at their site and they say they get data from 11,500 viewers, which to me, seems like a very small sample. I'd go as far as regarding it as a rough estimation. "In fact the story says 11% of the audience watched the show." - i have no idea where you got that from, the article clearly says it's a 27% share of the audience.

dano - 06/11/2008

This is possibly the dullest argument I have seen on Brand Republic. Well done chaps. You're not data planners by chance?

Alison Donnelly - 06/11/2008

Does anyone think that a 6% share of the audience is not bad going for a documentary whih had a week's turnround and had just a 2-day press promo campaign? Still well worth doing on Five's part.

Holly Martins - 06/11/2008

Did you watch it Alison? Because if you did you find it hard to say it was well worth doing. Quality programming is worth doing. Both from a viewer and an advertiser point of view. This satisfied neither demand. It was recycled clips combined with very dull and uninspired talking heads with nothing of any value to say. And I say this as a media planner.

Alison Donnelly - 06/11/2008

No I didn't watch it, just making the point that 6% for Five can't be considered a very bad audience share esp on a night where Paul Merton's show posted strong figures as well. I would still maintain that a show - whatever the content - that gets a pretty good share for a channel is still worth doing. Can't obv comment on what it was like to watch - if it was very bad then I'm sure we'll see the knock on effect in the share Five gets for the Madonna doc next week. Will wait and see.