How did Destination X do then?

Do you remember TV’s Next Big Format Destination X? It actually finished six weeks ago, but BARB have just put out the final +28s so that gives us an excuse to do a lovely graph. And here it is!

What have we learned from this? Well mainly it’s eeriely consistent, in +28 aggregated viewing it stuck resolutely around 4.5m from episode four, but the gap between +7 and +28 narrows as the show progresses, so if you liked it you made more of an effort to catch-up sooner. Also helping that red line there is the way BARB has started aggregating showings (As Viewed) – the +7 figures also include the repeats added into the same figure – there are arguments for and against this, I’m broadly for it, if only because some catch-up figures in the past have been added to repeat numbers and not the original broadcast which doesn’t seem quite right – and PR has been doing this for a while anyway. Interestingly the consistent +28s suggests no traditional bump for the finale, but if you were watching it before you probably chose to watch the final live.

Now the next question which is how does it compare to series one of megahit The Traitors? The Traitors got off to a mediocre start but has become a massive word of mouth success. Do the numbers project that Destination X could do the same thing? And my answer is: probably not, but it’s complicated.

Some reasons for this: firstly the different episode orders – 10 vs 12, but you’ll also notice that this graph stops at episode 8, por quoi? Because up until the end of August BARB had a different format which conveniently changed from As Broadcast (which assigned a rating and its catch up to a specific showing, leading to some repeat catch-up anomalies as suggested above) to As Viewed before the final figures came out and this is how we can do like-for-like. We can speculate given the differences in the previous weeks were converging around 0.5m in aggregation that you can mentally put 3.4-3.5m for the final pair of episodes (but that’s only a guess). It’s certainly something, but whereas The Traitors really takes off in that final week as everyone starts catching up with it, Destination X… doesn’t really, it climbs, but it doesn’t take-off. Although we also must remember that Destination X was put out in the late Summer this year and the first series of The Traitors went out December 2022, but that shouldn’t really effect the trend.

What does this all mean? It’s fair to suggest Desty X isn’t a flop and that it’s certainly overperformed compared to how it has done internationally – it can probably justify a second go on all sorts of metrics if they want to. The question is was it worth the apparent outlay? It was a £20m tender with NBC and if we presume a 50/50 split it’s a million quid an episode, really high-end for reality and there are plenty of shows that do a lot better for a lot less money (including The Great British Sewing Bee which was on at the same time, and is some people sewing). Whereas The Traitors was the show everybody was talking about (eventually), people were talking about Destination X only to say “I wish this was better. Rob Brydon’s good though.” And what happens if NBC don’t want to have a second series? The point of the co-production is that it’s cheaper sharing teams and resources (economies of scale), but the numbers weren’t incredible for NBC, if they don’t add up then can the BBC justify the extra cost going it alone? How much would those extra costs be?

Speaking of Traitors, I note Werewolves has been picked up by Banijay for international use at MIPCOM. This is interesting, I haven’t watched it but my French and German correspondents really enjoyed it – it gets around a lot of the more “broken” format points from The Traitors with its use of roles and different winning conditions despite being basically the same idea. Interestingly Traitors is successful in France and Germany, which have had Werewolves adaptations, but it’s not the phenomenon it is in the UK. If Channel 4 wanted a smarter, “better” version of the idea it would probably fit quite well for them, but I wonder if it would invite blowback in the UK in a way it probably wouldn’t elsewhere.