Next summer’s series of Big Brother will be the last on Channel 4, the broadcaster announced today, bringing the reality show’s decade-long run to an end.
The programme burst onto screens in 2000 and paved the way for the prime time reality TV which dominates our screens today.
It proved to be not only a ratings winner for Channel 4, but highly lucrative for the contestants who went on to become household names, gracing red carpets and cash in on magazine deals.
Channel 4’s director of television Kevin Lygo said today that Big Brother remains profitable for Channel 4, but the decision to end it is creative rather than commercial.
The first series of the show in 2000 got off to a steady start, but the underhand antics of "Nasty” Nick Bateman became a talking point for the nation.
Footage of the housemates was streamed on the internet - and on the day Bateman was booted off the show, the Big Brother website had 7.5 million viewings - a world record spike for an individual website at that time.
The series saw 20 million calls made to the Big Brother eviction line and 7.4 million votes were cast in the final phone poll - the biggest ever UK televote at that time.
During the programme’s first outing, a staggering 38 million viewers - 69 per cent of the UK population - watched Big Brother at least once.
Big Brother mania also saw its theme by Paul Oakenfold taking the charts by storm, going in at number four on its first week of release and shifting 200,000 copies.
The huge appetite for the show meant the public could look forward to whole summers being dominated by Big Brother, and during the winter they could tune in to the celebrity version of the programme.
At the height of its success, the show is estimated to have generated around £68 million profit a year.
The biggest finale was in 2002, when 10 million viewers tuned in to see Kate Lawler win the third series.
The final attracted a 51 per cent share for Channel 4 - more than half the available viewing audience.
That series also contained the most successful contestant ever to come out of the show - Jade Goody.
The previously unknown dental nurse from Bermondsey, known for her pronunciation of “East Angular”, amassed an estimated £8 million fortune through autobiographies, TV shows, her own perfume and fitness DVDs.
Goody even allowed the cameras in to film the last weeks of her life during her cancer battle, which she lost earlier this year.
But in recent years the series has been on the wane, with viewing numbers spiralling downwards.
Viewing figures for launch night of the latest series of the show were down for the second year in a row.
The average audience for the start of the 10th series of the show was 5.1 million, the broadcaster said, a fall of 300,000 from last year.
PA