Features: Ratings

How do you halve the viewing figures for Crossroads 2001?

Go and make a cup of tea!

Were the ratings really that bad?

SECTION 1: THE FIRST EPISODE…

Let’s start by looking at the flurry of excitement that surrounded the first episode of the new series. This was always going to be a ratings success as curiosity tends to draw people in for the first episode of any new series…

“2m viewers (lunchtime) were there to witness the return of Crossroads. The 5.05pm repeat pulled in a bigger audience, but a lower share of the viewing at that time. It took 3m and a 22% share.”

MEDIA GUARDIAN (Tuesday March 6th 2001)

ITV also repeated the first two episodes between 9pm and 10pm on Tuesday 6th March…

“…but the repeats had just 4.7m viewers and a 21% audience share, according to unofficial overnights.”

MEDIA GUARDIAN  (Wednesday March 7th 2001)

Now maybe this is sour grapes on our part – but doesn’t this sound like a fairly negative analysis of the figures? Instead of celebrating that in fact a total of 9.7 million viewers had chosen to watch the first episode, it seems as though there was too much emphasis on the 21% audience share – What did they expect? Did they think the 5 million that had already watched the first episode would tune in again?

SECTION 2: RATINGS FOR THE SERIES

The following table will “hopefully” include as many references to the ratings as possible.

Up until December 2001 BARB made the ratings available (and we are grateful to Planet Crossroads for keeping these available).

After this date ratings were not published outside the television industry – and certainly not when they were as (ahem) low as those achieved by Crossroads.

The data in the table below comes from several sources:

(pc) PLANET CROSSROADS, (mg) MEDIA GUARDIAN, (A) ANANOVA, (dm) DAILY MAIL (DS) DIGITAL SPY

It is very interesting to note that in 2005 with 2.57million viewers the Paul O’Grady show was seen as a ratings success and “giving Anne Robinson a run for her money” yet when Crossroads was achieving 2.4 million for the same slot in May 2002 the press was full of phrases such as “ratings slumps” and “failure”. Immediately after this of course, Crossroads was “rested” for the whole of June 2002 while the world cup was broadcast. Whether this break before the final 2 months of the series was allowed to play out had any impact is of course purely conjecture. However, let’s not forget that the figures quoted by Digital Spy show that 3 million people were tuning in to the evening slot during the final month of the series.

What if the show hadn’t been rested during June? What if the show hadn’t been taken off air for four months and changed completely? Would 2.57 million viewers be seen as a ratings success for Crossroads?

Obviously producing a soap is more expensive than a chat show so comparisons of this nature are unfair to a certain extent but one can’t help wondering…Maybe Crossroads was always going to be a TV victim…The critics certainly seemed to whoop with delight at the prospect of getting just another dig in – about such trivial items as the length of someone’s fringe or the number of times the “executive suite” got a mention ( I kid you not.)

Ultimately the decision to alter the format, axe the cast, ignore storylines and “camp it up” failed to win the audience ITV desperately craved and Crossroads was left to limp out of the schedules once and for all in May 2003.

CROSSROADS 2001’s legacy, I suppose is that in August 2002, a figure of 3 million viewers means that it remains ITV’s most popular daytime programme for several years. Interesting that!