If There Is A Future For Television It Must Enable Viewer Interaction or Participation

Recent viewer figures identify that programming that enables viewers to interact with the show in a way that they effectively decide the outcome create a much larger audience. - 'I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!' almost halved the audience for BBC One's 'Apparitions', as 8.1m viewers tuned in to watch Robert Kilroy-Silk face the grimmest Bushtucker Trial to date.
A two-hour special, in which Kilroy-Silk topped a live vote among viewers to face the 'Jungle Gym', captured a 35.3% share of the audience between 8pm-10pm.

The show grabbed a large share from BBC One's new supernatural drama 'Apparitions'. It drew a relatively tiny audience of 2.9m viewers,12.5% share of the audience in the 9pm-10pm slot, after launching with 4.6m viewers the previous week.

A Channel 4 documentary about disabled domestic pets was watched by 1.8m viewers taking a 7.6% share of the audience at the same time. Including viewers on Channel 4+1, 'Special Needs Pets' had 2m viewers and an 8.7% share of the audience.

Cult pop quiz 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks' brought BBC Two 1.9m viewers and an 8.3% share of the audience between 9pm-9.30pm. Five's documentary series 'Danger Men' netted 871,000 viewers and a 3.7% share of the audience with a look at 'Extreme Divers' between 9pm-10pm.

This trend is sure to set the future of Television success, The X Factor is another prime example of a large audience show which has participation on 2 levels, the first is that the contestants are actually picked from the general population and the audience effectively decide their destiny. The BBC has their own show that also attempts to pull in large audience figures through participation. This is Strictly Come Dancing. It is really interesting however to see the reaction of the BBC show compared to Simon Cowell and the X Factor team when the audience are being seen to hijack the program. The UK audiences have been following celebrity fuelled campaigns to keep in these competitions participants who are seen as weaker than some of the others. The BBC Judges appeared to get more frustrated with the general public and take that out on the contestant, John Sergeant, They are not actually accepting that the audience are not taking the show as seriously as a dancing show and more as an entertainment show. The result was John Sergeant to resign from the show, this effectively removes some of the participation that they are trying to encourage. Simon Cowell however just made a comment that if the audience carried on voting for the weaker singer then they would only end up having to buy and listen to his songs on the radio at the end of the show – he went that evening based on public voting.