The Apprentice in crisis after pulling in lowest ever viewing figures since show moved to BBC
The Apprentice has sunk to its lowest ratings ever on BBC1 this week as viewers continue to abandon the long running show.
Thursday night’s programme, fronted by Lord Sugar, brought in an average of 4.3m viewers, the worst since the show moved to the flagship channel in 2007.
The episode, which saw the contestants have to create a new virtual reality game, beat the previous BBC1 low of December 2nd last year which got 4.6m.
At its high point the show used to get eight or nine million viewers. In recent years the averages for each series have been on a downward trend.
The overnight ratings do not include spin-off episodes such as The Final Five, You’re Fired or series such as celebrity version. They also do not measure catch-up viewing.
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The highest ever episode in 2009 got 9.2m viewers, while the final in 2011 brought in just over 9m, according to Overnights.tv who provided the data.
BBC1’s very lowest episodes for the show have mostly come in either the last two years or in the year it first moved across from BBC2 in 2007.
Thursday night’s show was hit by the storming success of this year series of I’m A Celebrity which got an average of 7.2m on ITV1 between 8.30pm and 10pm.
This week saw Sofiane Khelfa and Dillon St. Paul booted of the business reality show.
The two teams went head-to-head to create a new VR game before pitching it at the world-famous Comic Con exhibition in London.
Made up of Project Manager Sofiane Khelfa along with Alana Spencer, Grainne McCoy and Dillon St. Paul, the Team Titan failed to impress Lord Sugar and the virtual reality experts with their game, Magic Shells.
After their defeat, Sofiane decided to bring Grainne and Dillon back into the The Apprentice boardroom.
Once the trio had bickered and pleaded for their position in the process, Lord Sugar delivered his final verdict.
Starting with the PM, he said: “Sofiane, so many people tell me that you’ve got no regard for their ideas. You do your own thing, I can’t deal with people like that.
“Grainne, on this particular task I don’t know what you did, at all. I think you took the opportunity to sit back.
"Dillon, you’ve been labelled the creative person, but at the end of the day this wasn’t creative.
"You know what, Sof disregards instructions but you’re exactly the same I think. I think once you get something in your head, you’re not going to listen to anybody."
The freelance art director tried to defend himself, but Lord Sugar was having none of it.
He said: "It’s not a case of hindsight, I keep hearing ‘had you had your time again, if you did this again, had you rethought it again and whilst you are a very, very, very nice person Dillon...I don’t think you have the potential to be my business partner…it is with regret...Dillon, you’re fired."
But before the other two candidates could breathe a sigh of relief, the businessman pointed his finger at Sofiane.
He continued: "It’s getting very, very close to the end now.
"Sofiane, you go on your own, you do your own thing…I’m finding it difficult that you are a potential winner, Sofiane you’re fired!”
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