Celebrity Big Brother leads the list of Ofcom's most complained about TV shows of 2018
The final series of Celebrity Big Brother has been revealed as the most complained about television series of 2018 by Ofcom.
Roxanne Pallett's accusations in Big Brother saw most complaints in 2018
The long-running Channel 5 reality series drew 27,602 complaints this year, with the majority [25,327] around a claim made by actress Roxanne Pallett that she was physically assaulted by another soap actor, Ryan Thomas. She has since issued an apology to him for making the accusation. Another 1,101 related to Rodrigo Alves using a racial slur.
Second on the list was an episode of ITV’s Loose Women, which featured Kim Woodburn as a guest, which drew 8,002 complaints.
Ofcom has revealed that it is investigating both programmes as it aims to determine whether “potentially offensive content was editorially justified and placed into appropriate context.”
Sky News was third on the list with 4,251 complaints followed by Love Island with 4,192 complaints and Coronation Street with 1,098 complaints.
ITV programmes made up the rest of the top 10 list; Emmerdale: 759 complaints, Good Morning Britain: 548 complaints, This Morning: 402 complaints, I’m a Celebrity…Get me Out of Here: 335 and The X Factor with 286 complaints.
Tony Close, Ofcom's director of content standards, licensing and enforcement, said: “Viewers are as passionate about what they watch as ever, discussing programmes with their friends and family, and with other people on social media. They complain to us when they think programmes have fallen below the standards they expect, and we carefully assess each and every complaint we receive.
“This year, we’ve taken action on many occasions where programmes have fallen short of the standards required by our rules.”
In total Ofcom received 55,842 complaints about programmes in 2018 and launched 137 investigations into TV and radio programmes. Of the 129 investigations concluded during the year, it found that 80 cases had broken broadcasting rules, with cases resolved and 33 cases were found not to have breached our rules.