Apprentice gets a lesson from the master Joe
OPENING: The Apprentice has yet to shine in the ratings
It may have gone down a storm with viewers and critics, but TV3's The Apprentice was in the shadow of its old RTE master.
New figures show that the Bill Cullen-fronted show, which is expected to be the station's greatest success story, only scored half as many viewers as Who Do You Think You Are? on RTE.
The two programmes, both take-offs of successful BBC formats, went head-to-head on Monday night, with the RTE show featuring Joe Duffy.
The Apprentice took the largest share of the adult age group, between 15-34, viewing between 9pm and 10pm, with percentage viewing at 19.6pc.
However, overall figures show that Joe Duffy's appearance on the family tree programme on RTE1 pulled in an average of 471,000 viewers, while The Apprentice peaked at 237,000.
"Between the key times of 9.30pm to 10.00pm, when the two shows were running concurrently, Who Do You Think You Are? had 31pc of the viewers, while The Apprentice had 15.8pc," said RTE's Catriona Edwards.
Meanwhile, a representative from TV3 said that Bill Cullen's show is 57pc up on the average for the time slot year-on-year.
"This is the beginning of an exciting 12-week run and reaction from viewers, press, radio and blogs has been, universally positive," said Deirdre Walsh from TV3.
The first episode of TV3's Irish reality show was strong for several audiences, in particular women between 15 to 34.
"If the show continues to average 236,000 viewers per episode, although we are expecting the figure to climb, it will easily make it on to the weekly top five programmes list," said Ms Walsh.
However, TV3 said that the two shows should not be judged like for like, as they have different demographic markets and the viewing figures from RTE2 and TV3 would be a fairer comparison.
- Lorna Nolan
