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Ratings tumble for BBC as viewers snub new-look shows
December was a disaster for BBC1 as a bid to fill the channel with "young and sexy" shows proved a massive turn-off with viewers.
The Beeb suffered its lowest audience share for 16 years in a severe embarrassment to the channel's controller Jay Hunt and Director General Mark Thompson.
BBC1's peak-time share for shows between 7pm and 10.30pm was 23.4% down 4.7% on December 2008 - its worst performance since 1993. All-day audience share (6am to midnight) was 21.5 %, down 1% on 2008.
Stars Alesha Dixon, Tamsin Outhwaite and Amanda Holden were supposed to woo the viewers, but they all suffered in the battle with rivals such as ITV.
Strictly Come Dancing, with judge Alesha, 31, controversially replacing Arlene Phillips, 66, waltzed into the sunset 400,000 viewers down.
And while its ITV rival X Factor regularly generated audiences above 14 million, the 2009 Strictly averaged just 9.1 million.
An insider said: "These figures are not going to make good reading for Mark Thompson or Jay Hunt.
"The truth is a lot of the new shows in December didn't work and will be axed, and some more established shows are looking long in the tooth. Something needs to change."
In other flops, Tamsin Outhwaite and co-star Emun Elliot's drama Paradox - about bids to stop disasters foretold by images - failed to foresee it would have audiences of less than three million in December.
And Amanda Holden's comedy Big Top, set in a circus, started with 3.3 million viewers but hurtled off the high wire losing almost a million viewers.
Spy drama Spooks was a ghost of its former self in terms of viewers, losing 1.7 million to an average of 5.3 million. And even hits like Doctor Who's Christmas special were down several million on previous years.
The BBC pointed out millions now watched its shows on the iPlayer catch up service. A spokesman added: "BBC1 remains the most watched channel in peak time and all hours viewing in December and across the year as a whole."
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