Channel 4 Great British Bake Off finale down more than half a million viewers on 2018
2019’s Great British Bake Off finale saw a decline of half a million viewers compared to last year, drawing in an average overnight audience of 6.9 million against 7.5 million in 2018.
Channel 4 reported a 9% drop off series-on-series / Channel 4
Though Channel 4 reported a 9% drop off series-on-series, it said that Tuesday’s episode (29 October) pulled in the biggest live audience of this series so far, with a 33.2% – the biggest watching any TV channel between 8.00pm and 9.15pm.
At its peak 7.7 million viewers tuned into the last episode of series 10, against series nine’s height of 8.6 million.
Despite a drop off the show is still proving popular among millennial audiences, with Channel 4 drawing the biggest share of 16-34 year old viewers, its key demographic, from 8.00pm to 11.20pm on Tuesday thanks to Bake off (53.8%), The British Tribe Next Door (23.1%) and Gogglebox (11.1%).
Headline sponsor Amazon, which has supported Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood-fronted show for two years at a reported £5m cost, will be one brand watching the figures carefully.
Social data from Vanquis, which analysed around 8.2 million tweets about the Great British Bake Off throughout this series, claims that it has been one of the least-discussed runs of the show.
The figures revealed series 10 to have garnered 50,804 tweets per episode. In series 7, fans were sharing an average of 213,784 tweets per episode – over four-times as many. In 2019, 28.1% of tweets about the show were negative, against 2018’s 27.3%.
Since buying GBBO from BBC in 2017, Channel 4 has been unable to emulate the peak success of the 2016 final which was watched by 16 million people at its pinnacle. On the whole, however, the show has been a success for the broadcaster, with some episodes peaking at 10 million.
When Channel 4 first purchased the show, the costly headline sponsorship was split between Tate & Lyle and Dr Oetker, while presenters Noel Fielding and Sandi Toksvig were brought on board to give it a fresh feel.
In the first year after the shock sale, advertisers like eBay spoke of a “Bake Off bump” praising Channel 4 for having struck the balance between bringing value to advertisers while retaining loyal audiences.