Five director of programmes Dan Chambers has said that Back to Reality , the channel's£4.7m reality TV experiment, was 'worthwhile' despite pulling in fewer than half the viewers the channel had hoped for.
Five director of programmes Dan Chambers has said that Back to Reality , the channel's £4.7m reality TV experiment, was "worthwhile" despite pulling in fewer than half the viewers the channel had hoped for.

He said that while the show did not average the10% share chief executive Jane Lighting wanted, it brought more young people and viewers to the channel.

" Back to Reality may not have achieved the overall audiences we might have hoped for but it did deliver us the enormously attractive 16 to 34 year-old demographic in larger numbers than ever before and brought many people to the channel for the first time. I feel it was a very worthwhile thing," said Chambers.

"Like every broadcaster we're always looking for break-out hits and you don't get those without taking a few risks," he added.

The Princess Productions show, which followed the exploits of former reality stars in a studio-based mansion and ran from 15 February to 5 March, averaged a 4.2% share and 1 million viewers in its main 20.00 peak slots. This figure is down on the 4.7% Five usually averages for the same time period.

The later edition of the show, which started at 23.00, also recorded a fall on the usual 10.6%, taking 8.7% and 900,000 viewers. In the earlier slot, Five achieved a 7% audience share of viewers aged 16 to 34, up from the 4.8% average, while the same demographic in the 23.00 show rose from the usual 8.8% to 11.2%.