Celebrity BB viewers drop by half

The launch of the new Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack attracted less than half the audience of last year’s regular star name format.
Overnight estimates showed 3.5m viewers watched the reality programme, compared with 7.3m who tuned into the first in the series of 2007’s celebrity version.

Nearly two million people switched off when the show ended on Channel 4 and continued on digital station E4.

Celebrity Hijack sees stars act as Big Brother to a house of “unknowns”.

…and somehow people are surprised that there are fewer viewers?

Having to change channel to watch the rest of a programme is probably enough to do it. Then there’s the relatively little publicity it’s gained – the prospect of celebrities just “dropping in” rather than staying and slowly going crazy isn’t quite as attractive.

Add to that, that it’s all getting a bit old and tired?

It’s inevitable.