Big Brother: Best Shows Ever brings ratings success to E4
Big Brother: Best Shows Ever got off to a solid start in the ratings last night, immediately emerging as E4’s most-watched non-scripted show of 2020.
The first episode of the special retrospective series revisited the infamous Big Brother 1 showdown in which Craig Phillips exposed ‘Nasty’ Nick Bateman’s rule-breaking nominations plot.
Despite being a 20-year-old repeat, It was the highest-rating non-terrestrial programme on Sunday, attracting an overnight average of 660,000 viewers (3.7%) to Channel 4’s sister brand, including +1.
The figure is almost three times E4’s 9pm slot average (268,000/1.4%), and comfortably above the highest overnights the channel has recorded in recent weeks, which have come in at around 400-450,000.
It is also just 25k short of the 685,000 who watched Channel 5’s final episode of Big Brother in November 2018 – even though E4 reaches less than half of C5’s audience share.
Meanwhile, 9.7% of 16 to 34-year-olds tuned in, a whopping 309% increase on the slot average – making E4 the second most popular channel in the key youth demographic at the time.
The impressive stats mean that Big Brother: Best Shows Ever is now E4’s highest-rating non-scripted programme of the year so far.
The remainder of the series will face stiff competition, however, as rival broadcaster ITV2 begins airing the first series of Love Island Australia in the 9pm slot tonight.
Commissioned to celebrate the show’s 20th birthday, Best Shows Ever is the first official Big Brother programming to air on the Channel 4 network in almost a decade.
Each 75-minute instalment features a full classic ‘civilian’ or Celebrity episode of BBUK, remastered to improve picture quality, with those in 4:3 format remaining in their original aspect ratio.
For early series, which aired in shorter timeslots, multiple episodes have been joined together – although some scenes that “didn’t feel right for 2020” have been edited out.
Highlights in
the first week include Nikki Grahame’s ‘Who is she?!’ rant, Ulrika Jonsson and Verne Troyer’s ‘Endless Love’ duet, and Jackie Stallone’s late arrival.
Big Brother: Best Shows Ever continues every night between Sunday-Thursday at 9pm on E4 until 25th June.