Final series of Big Brother next year

Channel 4's final series of reality TV show Big Brother will be broadcast next year, it has announced. The station, home of the programme since it began in 2000, will honour its deal to screen series 11 next summers. Channel 4's director of television Kevin Lygo said the show "had reached a natural end point on Channel 4 and it's time to move on". Big Brother has suffered from falling ratings in recent years, with the current run the least watched. The latest series has picked up about two million viewers per show, compared with an audience high of eight million in 2002.

Speaking at the broadcaster's new schedule launch, Channel 4 head Julian Bellamy said: "Big Brother has been our most influential and popular programme over the last decade." But he added that "inevitably we're both excited and ever-so-slightly terrified by the prospect of getting by without it". Mr. Bellamy said the loss of Big Brother would leave a "huge hole" in the station's schedules, but would prompt "the most fundamental creative overhaul" in Channel 4 history.