Celebrity Big Brother bowed out with its final show on Britain's Channel 4 Friday, after the broadcaster decided to axe the series amid falling ratings. The regular Big Brother, a pioneer in the reality TV genre with versions all over the world, also has its swansong this year as ratings shifted from the survival format to talent competitions like “The X Factor” and “Britain's Got Talent”. When the final Celebrity Big Brother series launched earlier this month, it drew an average of 5.8 million viewers, fewer than the show's heyday although well above recent lows. But it lagged behind the BBC's “So You Think You Can Dance?”, which attracted an average of 6.4 million viewers. Also affecting ratings have been the personalities on the shows. The winner on Friday was Alex Reid, a cage fighter famous for his relationship with glamour model Katie Price. A rank outsider when the series opened, Reid was favorite by the final night and beat other finalists including soccer player-turned-actor Vinnie Jones, singer Dane Bowers, Swedish dance music star Jonas Altberg and actress Stephanie Beacham. Commentators have said Big Brother never fully recovered from the 2007 race row between Jade Goody and Shilpa Shetty, after which they said it was “watered down.” Others believed the show had grown stale and failed to win over the “Facebook generation” of young viewers more likely to find their entertainment on the Internet.
