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Figures compiled by Nielsen//NetRatings showed that this year's Big Brother competition helped attract a unique audience of 1.4 million people for its dedicated Web site in July. In 2001, the Internet audience for Big Brother was under one million, and in 2000 was just over 500,000, during the same period.
However, according to Tim Roe, senior analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings, this massive increase in the number of people using the Internet to check out the latest news on Big Brother 2002 did not hurt its TV viewing figures, but actually helped them. At its peak, the show was watched on television by 10 million people.
"Fans had a number of ways to become involved in the latest Big Brother series, and the Internet allowed them to experience more than they could as TV viewers," commented Roe in a statement. "But, rather than detracting from the TV viewing figures, our research shows fans were spending time during the day on the Internet seeking out the latest news and events in the house, then watching the programme at home on TV.
"The research shows that the Internet content whetted viewers appetites for the evening shows, helping keep audiences interested even when no big events were scheduled. For advertisers, this is a great case study in how to get your message across using media that can compliment, not compete, with each other. It's a real taster of what's to come in the future," he added.
Additional research by Nielsen//NetRatings will though be of concern to businesses who feel staff waste working time on such sites. The research company found that the 640,000 people who logged on to channel4.com/bigbrother from work spent on average three hours and 20 minutes on the site during the month of July.
The last couple of years have seen several business bodies complain that the popularity of the show was impacting negatively on their members as staff idled hours away and used up valuable bandwidth catching-up on the latest antics in the Big Brother house. In 2000, Websense, a provider of employee Internet management solutions, estimated that workers accessing the Big Brother site from their office PCs were costing British industry STG1.4 million a week.
Nielsen//NetRatings' also found that while women aged 18 to 24 made up a relatively small number of individuals in the site's Internet audience, 98,000 people, they amassed nearly 26 million page views in June 2002. According to Nielsen, this made women in this age group the most active audience group on the Web site with an OTS rating (Opportunity To See) factor three times higher than all adults combined.
Overall, 163 million page views were recorded for the Channel4.com domain in June 2002 compared with 41 million in May 2002, with an audience of 1.86 million in June 2002, when the show started, compared to 1.46 million in May 2002.
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