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:
“A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of “spirit” over matter.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Here also was made the novelty ‘Chestnut Bell’ which enjoyed unusual popularity during the gay nineties when every dandy jauntily wore one of the tiny bells on the lapel of his coat, and rang it whenever a story-teller offered a ‘chestnut.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“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)