First live Strictly 2024 programme sees viewership drop to lowest level ever

Strictly Come Dancing The first live show of 2024 took place this week, and viewing figures showed that fewer fans than ever before watched the first broadcast.

The episode aired on Saturday night, September 21, drew the highest number of viewers, 6.7 million, which was the lowest first-week viewership ever for the series.

For comparison, last year the first live performance was watched by 7.3 million viewers, in 2018 and 2020 the viewership was at least 10 million, and in 2019 the number of viewers was 8.5 million.

However, the episode aired on September 21 was watched by one million more viewers than the pre-recorded inaugural episode from the previous week.

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In addition to the general shift away from traditional broadcasters and linear TV (iPlayer viewing figures are hugely important to a show’s success), this year’s series has been mired in controversy for months now, with neither Giovanni Pernice nor Graziano Di Prima returning.

In the first week of competition, JLS star JB Gill and Amy Dowden topped the table with 31 points, closely followed by Sarah Hadland and Vito Coppola, and Tasha Ghouri and Aljaž Škorjanec, who both scored 30 points.

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As this was the first week, there was no public vote to send anyone home. This week’s results will be combined with the current results and the viewer vote will be open.

Strictly Come Dancing will return on Saturday 14 September on BBC One, as a spin-off Strictly speaking: it takes two airs weekdays on BBC Two. Both programmes are available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

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