Ratings update - ITV ditches Tough Gig

Wednesday 27th June 2007, 3:06pm

ITV have pulled the under-performing Tough Gig from its Tuesday night schedule after it bombed in the ratings last night. Arabella Weir's Tough Gig, in which comedian Arabella Weir visited an Edinburgh ghost festival, was seen by just 800,000 viewers.

The ITV series, in which famous comedians face "the biggest challenge of their careers when they have to perform stand-up in front of unusual audiences", has not found favour with either audiences or critics since it debuted a couple of weeks ago. In the first episode Frank Skinner performed to a group of hippies; Dara O'Briain hung out with Lord Of The Rings fans last week; and this week Arabella Weir spent a week at Edinburgh's Ghost Fest.

An ITV spokesperson said the remaining three episodes of Tough Gig would be broadcast but "no new time had been found for them yet". Viewers may therefore have to wait a while to see Patrick Kielty performing to a group of British rappers and the episodes featuring Shaun Williamson (aka Barry off Eastenders) and Russell Howard (the Mock the Week regular).

So far its been a prime-time nightmare for ITV - the network announced today that they have also been forced to ditch high-concept chat-show 24 Hours With... and move Peter Jones' heavily promoted business reality series Tycoon to a smaller slot after neither show managed to reach the 2m viewers mark.

It appears ITV's dud programming last night helped out Lenny Henry's series about British humour. The comic's documentary, which up until this week had been struggling, was up to 3.8 million viewers (an 18% audience share) according to the unofficial overnights.

Meanwhile Sensitive Skin no doubt collected up some of the viewers who'd given up with Tough Gig over on ITV. The returning sitcom, which stars Joanna Lumley, gave BBC2 a 10% audience share (1.9 million viewers) during the 10pm - 10:30pm time slot.

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