Ratings error on C4 comedy show

Channel 4’s new panel show The Comedy World Cup has turned out to be a lot less popular than first thought, thanks to an error by audience-measuring company Barb.

Original overnight figures stated the second edition of the show, hosted by David Tennant, had been watched by an impressive 1.9million viewers.

However researchers at Barb have now issued an apology, saying it got the numbers wrong last weekend, and re-evaluated the show as having 631,000 viewers – just under a third of the audience initially quoted.

The 1.9million figure did seem an unusually high leap, as the opening episode seven days earlier was seen by 880,000 people in its Saturday-night slot.

According to trade magazine Broadcast, Barb has blamed an ‘error in audio referencing procedures’ for the mistake. Homes that are monitored for ratings purposes contain a device that identifies the channel being viewed by matching the audio against a database.

Although The Comedy World Cup audience was overestimated because of the mistake, other shows were underestimated. The X Factor has had its audience revised upwards from juts under nine million to 9.84million.

Published: 1 Oct 2012