*as it stands, the third worst rating ever

Well, with little to no advertising and a month earlier than usual it's no surprise the ratings are low tbh. Bit annoying though because it's one of the best series in years so far.

Surely they'd see these ratings and think about rummaging together some kind of quick billboard campaign? Word of mouth can only do so much.

Is that rating still high for channel 5 though? Just out of interest?

690k? Welp

700-800k is usually the norm, but it depends on the program

thats bad but expected! Why don't Channel 5 not have a show on Saturday and have a 2 hour highlight show on Sunday, considering Sundays always rate high.

Jesus Christ I didn't think it would fall that low! :o

Which episodes had lower viewing figures than that?

Caroline's eviction was one, I don't know what the other one was.

Big Brother shouldn't air on Saturday. I've said this for years, that the Saturday episodes just bring down the average of the series and that they shouldn't be aired. I'd much rather a 90 minute highlights show on Sunday.

It's down on last year's first Saturday highlights which got 952k (4.8%).

850K including +1, not so bad after all. Should hit 1.15 in the officials.

Seems like a good group this year. A shame we can't get to know them like we used to. It's almost as if people have just given up.

LIVE FEED :smug:

I really don't think live feed will boost ratings

Live feed WON'T boost the ratings. Channel 5 have make a complete cock-up of the promotion for this series, which is a shame because it's probably the best series we've had since 2010.

:clap1:

The only thing live feed will do is make some current viewers happy.

Agree with Will and Jarrod.

As much as I love Live Feed, the only reason this series is rating bad is because it screams of low ratings:

No promotion whatsoever for the series.
May launch for the first time in almost ten years.
Exam season.
BB15 putting people off Civilian Big Brother.

It will be interesting to see if the ratings get better around June, when exam season is over, and those who didn't know about it launching in May tuning in, thinking it is launching in June.

BB16 is rating low because of lack of promotion and hype, rather than it being a bad series.
BB15 rated low because it was bad series.

Plus, the ratings pattern isn't the same as it was for many Channel 4 series - the show used to launch very highly and then go steadily downhill, whereas nowadays the show tends to stay fairly low but consistent throughout, with a couple of drops here and there (which I'm hoping last night's show was)

Spot on Egghead.

This even happened in the golden era.

Look at the BB5 launch which rated at 7.23m. The second episode, the next day (Suitcase nominations) rated 3.86m.

That's a massive 3.37m (47%) loss of viewers from the launch.

These days there is a bigger retention in viewers, and the ratings are consistent.

If Channel 4 didn't have high launch and final ratings, the series averages would be lower.

Anything is better than BB11 lol that series was a joke.

That should have been it's excl figure though - there's no need for it to be as low as in the 600s. That's just inexcusable.
So sad as well, this series does NOt deserve to be tarnished with the same brush has BB15.

So in terms of bad and good:

Launch - bad
Wednesday - bad
Thursday - good
Friday - good
Saturday - bad

I don't think any of them can really be classed as good tbh.

I was going to evaluate better, but just thought I'd do it simply, Thursday was good as it had a really high share, larger compared to both BB14 and 15, whilst Friday was decent, BB15 only got 950k for the first eviction lol

Officials will be better. If im out then majority of BB fans are probably out too & watched it when they got back :)

No one is saying the live feed would boost the ratings. But the lack of it for 4 years despite constant complaints has just pushed viewers further and further away.

The fact is the lowest rated series of Big Brother on Channel 4 was the one without 24/7 live coverage (BB10) and the highest rated series on Channel 5 was the one with 2 hours every night (BB14)

There's plenty of other things wrong (and maybe some things right) but as people have said for years, they have ripped the heart and soul out of this show by not having it.