Here's an object lesson in that no matter how hard you try to produce something that will draw a large audience to your channel, there are numerous pitfalls to be encountered when chasing those elusive large audiences. And it is a mistake to rely on a star name to guarantee the success of a show; history is littered with failed attempts based on the attraction of a famous personality, and that's solely considering the well established terrestrial channels.
Living TV has been slowly gaining momentum as a channel courtesy of the cult series Most Haunted Live, and obviously Cilla Live was an attempt to provide something that would appeal to an even wider audience using tried and tested light entertainment ingredients. But all the hype in the world doesn't guarantee large audiences for a channel unless the formula is spot on - the penalty for overestimating the draw of a star name can be very severe.
This incident also ought to serve as a warning for the more established channels such as ITV1 who are now relying too heavily on event-based television; as audiences start to lose loyality towards a particular channel, the channel's audience figures start to fluctuate more wildly as a result and the channel in question starts to base its entire schedule around established ideas in a desperate attempt to maintain its audience share. But Cilla Live proves that famous names and familiar ideas count for nothing if viewer loyality is absent.
Although it's entirely possible that Cilla Live could attract larger audiences over time if turned into a series, 220,000 viewers is disappointingly low even by multichannel standards (BBC Four can manage better than this) and more so given the fact that it was a hyped Christmas special. Back to the drawing board, Flextech.
