Big Brother 2011 on Channel 5

Speaking to respected industry publication The Hollywood Reporter, media commentator Stephen Price says: ‘This is a big opportunity for Channel 5 to get the lucrative 16-34 audiences it doesn’t normally attract, as well as add some volume to its overall share.’

Price adds that if Big Brother continues to rate well for its new broadcaster, Channel 5 could potentially overtake its closest rival Channel 4 in share, which would mark one of the most significant shifts in British television broadcasting in decades.

‘For the two big beasts ITV1 and BBC1, this doesn’t really represent a massive challenge. But Channel 4 might feel some heat. It’s a bit of a double whammy for them, losing Big Brother and then it seemingly doing well elsewhere,’ said Price.

So far, Celebrity Big Brother has comfortably beaten Channel 4’s programmes head to head on every single night, at times with over double the number of viewers than C4. A Channel 4 spokesman, however, defended their ratings by saying that they cancelled the show last year for ‘creative reasons’.

A C4 spokesperson said: ‘We’ve always known that Celebrity Big Brother could still do a job in ratings terms, but we chose to decommission it for creative reasons. The show had gone as far as it could creatively and the hours freed up by cancelling it means we are able to try many new things.

Although ratings for Celebrity Big Brother have now settled between 2-3 million viewers, down from last week’s launch of over 5 million, Channel 5’s Head of programming Jeff Ford insists that this was expected.

Ford says: ‘No one expects it to stay at that [launch] level. To pull in these audiences [2-3m] every night for a single show is real result for the channel and is well above our slot average.’

Although Ford says that it’s still too early to say for sure that Channel 5′s acquisition of Big Brother has been a success, he said that executives at the broadcaster had thus far been ‘over the moon’ by how the show had been performing.

I'm surprised by how many people on Twitter/Various Forums were shocked that the interview was in the eye... I thought it was pretty obvious from launch night

Yeah on launch night my thought was "either the eye is the studio, or they've spent way too much money making the rear look nice for HD!"

I thought they were just trying to give it a kind of tunnel look. But I think it's a genius idea and I'm surprised it has never happened on Channel 4. I thought it was brilliant the way Brian just got up, the eye opened and he was back out in the crowd. The ending link works a lot better with a crowd than with a flat studio audience.

I agree, and it worked well with the eye, or should we say pupil staying open so that you could see Sally hugging friends & family in the back ground.

I don't suppose anyone has some screen captures from last night of the 'eye studio'?

Nation 217 was better.