14 September 2007

Popularity of Family History

The folks at the Canadian Genealogy Centre (CGC), part of Library and Archives Canada, are gearing-up, a bit nervously, for a rush of queries as a result of CBC's forthcoming series, Who Do You Think You Are?

Although CBC haven't been doing much advance publicity CGC looks at viewer statistics from the UK and get concerned. Here are recent statistics from MediaGuardian.

In summary:
BBC1's genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are? this past Wednesday drew an average audience of 5.6 million viewers and a 26% share over the 9pm hour according to the unofficial overnights. That was down 900,000 viewers and four share points on the previous week's which pulled in 6.5 million viewers at 30%.

These are very good figures, comparable with the most popular programs. ITV1's soap Emmerdale pulled in 6.5 million viewers and a 35% share over the hour from 7pm. The BBC's EastEnders running in the same timeslot got 5.9 million viewers.

If the CBC version proves as popular CGC could have a bit of work on their hands. Let's hope the folks running the web site are prepared for a genealogical tsunami.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And in another quarter of the same institution the hours of research have been slashed -- you wonder if the right hand knows what the left hand is doing? Or, is this just a bureaucratic game in the endless cycle to get more resources?