[Flux]

I think it is still hard for people to understand how overnight ratings work now in 2024, that the audience is simply not there and it is unlikely to change.

I remember a time when shows would get 8 to 10 million watching a mid week prime time 9pm show on BBC 1 or ITV, those days are long gone, and I doubt will ever return, the audience is too fractured and also people's style of watching TV has changed, we are now used to watching clips of shows on YouTube.

This is shown with the late night talk shows in the US, where once Johnny Carson's Tonight Show could command a nightly audience of around 9 to 12 million viewers a night, often peaking at 19 to 20 million for big occasions, now in 2024, the late night talk shows are lucky to squeeze past the 2 to 3 million mark on a big occasion, for example last week, one of Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show just got 1.2 million watching.

This is probably a bigger conversation, but in general I feel the number of views/likes/clicks the social clips get is slowly becoming more important than the actual ratings of a show. As reels, clips and short form content can be monetised and are reaching more people I think some productions already treat what should be the main product (i.e. The show!) as a vessel to facilitate headlines or short social edits, with more focus or pressure put on chasing social likes than actually making a strong programme. Of course that’s not true of every programme, but the likes of Big Brother do feed into that trend directly and - as long as the channel can monetise clips etc effectively - I can see shows like BB being kept on air in future purely for their short form popularity, even if the “main” show continues to dip.