Red or Black? loses 1.8 million viewers

By Maisie McCabe, brandrepublic.com, Monday, 05 September 2011 11:33AM

'Red or Black?', the new game show from Simon Cowell's Syco TV and ITV Studios, pulled in a peak audience of six million viewers last night, down sharply from its 7.8 million debut on Saturday night.

Last night’s first helping of ‘Red or Black?’ at 6.45pm to 8pm had an average audience of 4.6 million viewers on ITV1 and ITV1 HD, a 21.7% share. An additional 141,900 watched the show on ITV1+1.

The show's second episode of the night had an average audience of 5.3 million between 8.30pm and 9pm, a 20.3% share. An additional 164,200 watched the show on ITV1+1.

Across ITV1 and ITV1 HD the peak audience was 6.0 million during the first show and 5.8 million during the second show, trailing behind peaks of 7.8 million and 7.3 million for the first and second shows on Saturday night.

When ITV1+1 is included the peak audiences last night were 6.2 million for first show and 6.0 million for the second, down from 8.1 million and 7.6 million on Saturday night.

In the second offering of ‘Red or Black?’, carer Kevin Cartwright became the second person to win £1m but the programme was beaten in the ratings by the first in a new series of BBC One's 1960s detective drama ‘Inspector George Gently’.

The drama had an average audience of 6.47 million viewers, a 24.8% share, across BBC One and BBC One HD between 8.30pm and 10pm.

‘Red or Black?’ is the first co-production between ITV’s content arm ITV Studios and Syco TV and it will be broadcast across two episodes each night on eight consecutive days until Saturday night (10 September).

Channel 5’s ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ struggled against the first episode of ‘The Jonathan Ross Show’ on ITV1 on Saturday night, dipping to a series low of 1.55 million, but returned to two and a half million viewers last night.

Between 9pm and 10pm last night ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ had an audience of 2.5 million viewers on Channel 5, a 9.5% share of the available audience.

ITV’s controversial drama about mass murderer Fred West, ‘Appropriate Adult’, had an average audience of 4.42 million across ITV1 and ITV1 HD between 9pm and 10.30pm, an 18% share of the audience.

An additional 367,500 watched ‘Appropriate Adult’ on ITV1+1.

Elsewhere, ‘World’s Most Dangerous Roads’ on BBC Two and BBC HD featured presenters Sue Perkins and Charley Boorman travelling across Alaska.

The show had an average audience of 2.31 million between 9pm and 10pm, an 8.8% share.

This article was first published on brandrepublic.com