Popularity
The program has broken several records, including exceeding a 50% share of the ratings (with peaks of 60% during Season One). The fifth season recorded a decline in ratings; which has been put down to both the competition from rival reality television shows and the season's poor and hasty production. On the contrary, by the ninth edition, the show has recorded increasing ratings which took the program back to its original popularity.
In Italy Big Brother is a cultural phenomenon that has grasped the attention of both audience and press. The show is seen as a sociological experiment, an icon and symbol of the modern world, and derives its success from these factors.
Despite viewing figures declain over the years (especially in twelfth series) is Grande Fratello still one of most successful reality shows worldwide.
Read more about this topic: Grande Fratello
Famous quotes containing the word popularity:
“There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“A more problematic example is the parallel between the increasingly abstract and insubstantial picture of the physical universe which modern physics has given us and the popularity of abstract and non-representational forms of art and poetry. In each case the representation of reality is increasingly removed from the picture which is immediately presented to us by our senses.”
—Harvey Brooks (b. 1915)
“The popularity of that baby-faced boy, who possessed not even the elements of a good actor, was a hallucination in the public mind, and a disgrace to our theatrical history.”
—Thomas Campbell (1777–1844)