Bake Off sheds 4m viewers with shift from BBC
The Great British Bake Off lost around four million viewers with the shift from the BBC to Channel 4. The show relaunched on Tuesday with an average audience of 5.8million – a success for Channel 4 but well below the 10.4 million audience for the launch of the last series on BBC One.
THE Great British Bake Off lost around four million viewers with the move from the BBC to Channel 4.
The show relaunched on Tuesday night with an average audience of 5.8 million – a success story for the commercial broadcaster, but way below the 10.4 million who tuned in to the launch of the last Bake Off series on BBC One.
When those watching on the Channel 4+1 catch-up channel were added to the live figure, the total rose to 6.5million, still a fall of over one-third.
The ratings represented the highest Channel 4 audience in five years, with the exception of Grand National broadcasts. Jay Hunt, the chief executive, said the figures proved Bake Off is “still one of the country’s favourite shows” and gave the broadcaster its largest share of young viewers in over a decade.
She had previously said the programme needed only three million viewers to break even and that she would be delighted with an audience of “five, six, seven million”.
Paul Hollywood was perhaps not so thrilled, after his recent pronouncement that eight million would represent a “slump”. He only watched the last 20 minutes of the show, preferring to make a cup of tea. “I was there so I didn’t need to watch the whole thing,” he told Radio 2 yesterday morning.
Hollywood is the only member of the original on-screen team to stick with the show. Mary Berry has been replaced by Prue Leith, with Sandi Toksvig and Noel Fielding taking over from Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins.
The overall viewing figure is expected to rise by the end of the week when it takes into account those who recorded the programme in order to fast-forward through the adverts.
The chief gripe from viewers who tuned in to the launch show was the in- trusive presence of the commercial breaks. In all, the programme was packed with 28 adverts, plus six trailers for other Channel 4 shows and 10 sponsorship plugs. The first break alone contained two separate ads for ebay.
The final break was only a few minutes from the end, stringing out the wait to discover which of the bakers was being sent home.
More than a million viewers switched off in the last 15 minutes, when the show ran past 9pm. Next week, Bake Off faces a tougher ratings battle as BBC One schedules Doctor Foster, its most watched drama of 2015, in the 9pm slot.
Leith risked the ire of Channel 4 bosses, and advertisers who had paid handsomely for space, when she suggested that viewers skip the commercial breaks. “You don’t have to watch it in real time,” she counselled.
Hunt has been unapologetic about the need for advertising, saying the channel had been “very, very careful about thinking where the ad breaks sit”.
‘I was there so I didn’t need to watch the whole thing’