Monday, January 29, 2007

Big Brother - not just a tabloid fascination

Maybe it's got something to do with the size of the pages, but the tabloids are falling behind with their apparent blanket coverage of Big Brother.

Today's Media Guardian published the word count that the national press had devoted to describing and discussing the reality show between 19 and 25 January.

You'd expect the red top tabloids to be top of the charts. But no. The didn't commission long opinion pieces to discuss the state of the nation like the quality press - who so often like to look down on reality TV, yet critique it at the drop of a hat!

The top four places go to serious papers:

  • Guardian/Observer (30,291)
  • Independent/IoS (23,081)
  • Times/Sunday Times (21,545)
  • Mirror/Sunday Mirror (20,921)

Only then do the tabloids make an appearance:

  • Star (17,376)
  • Sun/News of the World (17,045)
  • Daily/Sunday Express (16,716)
  • Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday (15,931)

And finally the Telegraph - which must have been boycotting the whole BB fiasco (despite having the biggest pages to fill) with a mere 8,113 words.

No mention of the FT! Though it definitely covered the row when I picked up a free copy last week. Maybe the Guardian's Research Department - who provided the stats - ran out of patience!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Its a little better than others, but is the Mirror not also classified as a tabloid/red top?

I would say that most of the tabloids don't pick up the more serious and political issues instead focusing most of their pages on the 'gossip' surrounding it all.