Great British Bake Off reaches young audience (11)

Great British Bake Off reaches biggest young audience for TV series this year

BBC's James Purnell: 'You can’t serve young audiences without serving diverse audiences'

The Great British Bake Off on Channel 4 has been watched by more young people than any other series on TV so far this year. Bake Off’s move from the BBC to Channel 4 was controversial. But the latest viewing figures suggest Channel 4’s decision on showing the programme for the next three years has paid off hugely. TV analysts said it was rare for show to switch so smoothly between the main channels. Tom Harrington at Enders Analysis said: “It has been a great success, outdoing most expectations both critically and in terms of viewership with the final likely to be the most watched show on the channel in the past 15 years. This is impressive when you take general viewership decline into account.

• Channel 4 spent 75m to get the show
• This series generated an an average overnight audience of 6 million viewers per ep, and this rises to 8.9 million per episode when viewing over a seven-day period is taken into account.
• Fewer people are watching Bake Off on Channel 4 than they did on BBC1, with an average of 10.7 million tuning in for each episode in last year’s series. However, Channel 4 executives expected this and insiders say the broadcaster had budgeted to break-even with the show at around 3.5 million viewers per episode, with income coming from advertisers and sponsors.
• Bake Off’s audience has far outstripped that target and the show is attracting triple the number of people who would usually watch Channel 4 between 8pm and 9pm in the evening. 
• It is even attracting more viewers than The X Factor on ITV, which airs at primetime on a Saturday night

I feel that Bake-Offs success is not surprising considering how many loyal their fanbase is.