It would appear the programme is already struggling. I thought the lovely Sarah would have had her kit off by now!
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Five moves to save Reality flop
John Plunkett
Thursday February 19, 2004
Back to Reality: even Kerry McFadden guest appearance could not boost flagging figures
Channel Five bosses have moved swiftly to try to breathe life into reality flop Back to Reality - by scheduling two extra daytime editions and doubling the length of the late night update.
In what some may regard as an unusual tactic for a show which has failed to perform in the ratings, the changes equate to another 25 hours of Back to Reality across the final two weeks of its run.
At £4.7m, Back to Reality is Five's costliest original commission to date and channel bosses are desperate for it to be a hit.
Five director of programmes, Dan Chambers, has taken a hands-on role on location at the house in west London in a desperate effort to help turn the show around.
But its ratings suggest viewers have become exhausted by reality TV - temporarily at least - in the wake of ITV1's I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!.
The Five show, made by Princess Productions, began with 1.8 million viewers - or a 7% share - on Sunday night.
But the following day it lost more than a million viewers, down to just 700,000, and it has failed to recover.
Last night the 8pm edition was watched by an audience of 800,000, despite the added attraction of a "celebrity" guest appearance by Peter Andre from I'm a Celebrity.
The 11pm edition has performed slightly better than the mid-evening show, averaging around a million viewers, and it is this that Five bosses will hope to build on with the extended late night edition, which has been doubled to two hours.
The two new daytime editions will air at 9.30am, for 30 minutes, with an hour-long update at 2.30pm. The 8pm show will also be moved back an hour to 9pm in the show's third and final week.
If the changes are a success, it could breathe much-needed life into the show. However, if ratings don't pick up, Five bosses risk doing even more damage to their audience share.
Back to Reality has also failed to inspire the tabloid newspapers, possibly because of the involvement of Heat magazine, which is sponsoring the show.
A Five spokesman said the show had so far been up against tough opposition in the form of BBC1's EastEnders and ITV1's coverage of the Brit awards on Tuesday.
"The show has done well with younger viewers and performed very well at 11pm," he said. "That is what we hope the changes to the schedule will allow us to build on. It has been up against shows like EastEnders and the Brits and it was always going to suffer. We have seen it build a bit since then, and want to give as many viewers the chance to sample it as possible."
Back to Reality features 12 "stars" from other reality shows including Big Brother's Jade Goody and James Hewitt from Channel 4's The Games.
The idea of the show is to find Britain's most popular reality star. Viewers will begin to evict contestants from the house this weekend.