With three episodes of The Traitors Ireland broadcast to date, audiences are lapping up the show filled with lies, deception and deadly competition.
Figures released today show that over 600,000 people have watched the first episode on RTÉ One and RTÉ One +1 to date. A further 139,000 have streamed the show on RTÉ Player.
The show, which launched on Sunday night at 9.30pm, garnered a 46% share of the available audience on RTÉ One.
For the second episode on Monday night, the audience figures show that it has now been seen by 510,000 viewers on RTÉ TV to date and it reached a 43% share. Episode three, which aired on Tuesday, stands at 467,000 viewers and the share was 46%.
"We are delighted with the figures and delighted that the nation loves our new born baby as much as we do - long may that last," Darren Smith, Managing Director of Kite Entertainment, who has produced Ireland’s version of the global hit show, said.
Steve Carson, RTÉ’s Director of Video, said that they were "delighted" with the response to The Traitors Ireland and that audiences "are embracing all the drama and the homegrown storytelling," adding that "huge credit" goes to Kite Entertainment and Siobhán McSweeney "for bringing the format so brilliantly to Irish screens."
So what do these figures really mean?
Breaking them down, the figures tell us that of all the people watching television on these three nights, more than four in ten were tuned to RTÉ’s new reality hit.
The figures released today are generated from the industry standard Nielsen ratings, which tell broadcasters who watched a show live and who watched it within 24 hours. Nielsen also monitors episodes to see who watches two, three, four days later up to seven days after the initial broadcast.
By the end of the week, those numbers will feed into the show’s consolidated figures, and they are likely to be even higher as that confirms the overall number of people who viewed the show within the first week.
The figures are "really interesting because of the patterns we can see from the audience figures," Smith said. He explained that "part of the secret sauce" of this show is the connection between linear TV and the "box set experience on RTÉ Player."
Read more:
The Traitors Ireland Episode 1: Shock exits, family twists and the first murder
The Traitors Ireland Episode 2: breakfast, banishment and bedlam
Traitors Ireland Episode 3: a corpse, a comeback and a conundrum
Usually a show is broadcast on TV and then made available on RTÉ Player. In this case, though, The Traitors Ireland goes out live on RTÉ Player and on television, and then sits on the Player, "so they feed each other," Smith said.
"We are expecting big figures for RTÉ One TV this Sunday," he added. Going by the experience of other versions of The Traitors such as the BBC’s, viewers "will now watch this week’s three episodes on Player over the weekend, get hooked and then they will go to the linear screening on Sunday night for episode four."
Broadcasting the companion podcast The Traitors Ireland Uncloaked, hosted by Kevin McGahan, was new territory for RTÉ TV and it has been well received, drawing a 26% share on RTÉ One TV last night.
Undoubtedly, the scheduling of the show has played a significant role in making an impact on viewers too.
In this case, RTÉ is using event scheduling by airing the show on three consecutive nights at 9.30pm. The battle for eyeballs between social media, streamers and linear television has been well documented, so this kind of scheduling is one of the ways TV can grab audiences. It is a broadcasting model used for shows aiming to make a big impact, and viewers are used to it from hits like I’m a Celebrity, Love Island and of course The Traitors on the BBC.
For RTÉ, the decision was made to broadcast the show using the three-night model for the duration of the series, building up to the finale on 23 September.
There was no Tuesday night Prime Time yesterday, as it will return to its usual slot next week after its August break, with the programme resuming its regular twice-weekly slot on Tuesday and Thursday from 9 September. For the next three weeks, Tuesday’s Prime Time will follow The Traitors Ireland at 10.35pm, with the podcast Uncloaked moving to its new home on RTÉ Two.
The choice to screen the show from 31 August was choreographed too, as the start of September is a time when viewers are in "back to school mode" and routine returns after summer. TV channels around the world use this reset as their autumn launch. It is no coincidence that Channel 4’s juggernaut The Great British Bake Off started on 2 September.
Other factors that make event scheduling attractive to broadcasters include avoiding the risk of audiences becoming jaded by waiting weekly, or losing out to competing events such as sport.
Back to the show though, and surely with these numbers there will be more and more of The Traitors Ireland to come? No confirmation yet, with Smith only admitting that "we are optimistic and confident that there will be a second series."
You can guess that line was delivered with a Traitors-style evil wink and a deadly cheeky grin!
