The I’m A Celebrity final was a ratings flop this year – here’s why

Sam Thompson might have something to smile about today after being crowned King of the Jungle in last night’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! finale, but I’m sure the ITV suits aren’t as chirpy. Overnight figures show that an average of 6.6 million tuned in to watch Thompson’s crowning. Last year, that total stood at 10.1 million. Ouch.

It has not been a good year for Ant and Dec’s celebrity torture series. At its height in 2004 (when Kerry Katona took home the flower crown and Peter Andre fell madly in love with Katie Price), I’m a Celeb pulled in an average of 12 million; now it can only attract half its once-dedicated audience.

But why have we turned away from the former juggernaut? Why is 2023 the year we decided we’d had enough? I have some theories…

1. Nigel Farage

I’m a Celeb has been a staple of my annual TV calendar for as long as I can remember. But as soon as it was announced that the former Ukip leader would be heading into the jungle, I made the conscious decision to boycott this year’s series. I had seen how Matt Hancock had weaseled his way into the public’s good graces a year prior and was not willing to watch Farage do the same (it turns out I was right – just like Hancock before him, Farage came third in the public vote).

I obviously wasn’t alone. Just 10.24 million tuned into the launch show on 19 November. That’s 2.1 million fewer than watched last year’s first episode. Then, having a controversial politician among the campmates was a novelty, and we were all keen to see how Hancock would fare in the jungle. Now it’s simply boring and par for the course. Just like the show itself.

2. Reality TV has changed

Once upon a time, watching “celebrities” complain about having to exist on a diet of rice and beans and have to empty then clean their own dunny was entertainment enough. But in the two decades since I’m a Celeb first aired, audience tastes and reality television itself have changed unrecognisably. It’s no longer enough to watch the campmates wash their pants in a nearby stream; we want more dirty laundry, more humiliation, more drama than ever before. I’m a Celeb simply isn’t delivering.

The best reality TV has also abandoned the idea of having celebs do, well, anything. The Traitors and the recent reboot of Big Brother were so good precisely because of their casting of normal, interesting, relatable people who (for the most part) had no interest in using the series as a way to leapfrog their way to a fast fashion deal.

Proof that this is all we want from I’m a Celeb too lies in the series’ past winners – Jill Scott, Danny Miller, Jacqueline Jossa, Scarlett Moffatt – who were arguably the least “celebby” celebs in their cohort. What a shame that the inclusion of famous people is the entire concept of the programme…

3. Bushtucker Trials have lost their edge

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There are only so many times you can watch a comedian chomp on a camel penis and wash it down with a cockroach milkshake before it starts to feel normal. The Bushtucker Trials, once the highlight (for viewers) and lowlight (for the celebrities) of the show, have completely lost their novelty and, despite a valiant effort by the production team to keep things interesting, every single challenge is a variation on a theme, whether that is ‘eating gross things’, ‘being buried alive’, ‘having to hold your breath underwater for a long time’ or that old classic ‘being covered in maggots’.

The show has hit a ceiling when it comes to the trials; it can hardly ramp up the ante and make them much worse without violating some sort of human rights code. It feels as though every Bushtucker Trial avenue has already been travelled, thousands of times. Without this shock factor, I’m a Celeb is nothing more than a camping trip.

4. The fun is gone

That camping trip, though, used to be one of the best bits of I’m a Celeb. Remember when Peter Andre wouldn’t stop writing songs (which resulted in his number three hit “Insania”), or when David Gest revealed he had a cleaner called Vaginica Seaman, or when Miss Great Britain Amy Willerton attempted to teach Joey Essex how to read a clock (“I just don’t understand the ticks,” he explained)?

Now, thanks to the deliberately controversial line-ups, the I’m a Celeb camp is a hotbed of arguments and frustration. We’re more likely to be forced to listen to Farage debate Brexit with First Dates’ Fred Siriex than anything remotely amusing. Even the smallest of misunderstandings (eg this year’s “dadgate” in which Nella Rose, whose father had died, became upset with Siriex for telling her he was old enough to be her dad) become lightning rods for national debate.

What used to be a silly, fun and joyfully inconsequential programme has turned into yet another conduit for the culture wars.

5. TV as we know it is dead

The truth is that it’s not just I’m a Celeb and not just ITV that is suffering from lower viewership – all traditional broadcasters are losing audiences. The falling number of viewers might sound bad, but this year’s series was still consistently the most-watched programme on most weeknights, still beating out Strictly, Bake Off and even the return of David Tennant in Doctor Who.

According to the latest figures from Ofcom, the proportion of people watching traditional TV each week declined from 83 per cent in 2021 to 79 per cent in 2022. Instead, we’re watching on catch-up when it’s convenient for us, bingeing box sets or abandoning the likes of the BBC and Channel 4 for Netflix or Disney+. When it comes to younger viewers, they’re more likely to opt to watch TikToks or YouTube videos.

I’m a Celeb, then, is part of a dying era of television – and there’s very little ITV can do about it. The series has already been recommissioned, so we’ll be seeing celebrities gobble bugs on our screens until at least 2025. After that, though, I’d be surprised if the execs don’t send Ant and Dec down that swinging bridge for the very last time.