Graham Norton for The Neighbourhood / ITV
Graham Norton’s reality show The Neighbourhood has been dropped by ITV after just one series, it has emerged.
The programme featured families moving in to a purpose-built street before competing in various challenges to eliminate each other from the competition to try to win a cash prize.
The ratings were a huge disappointment for ITV when it aired in April and May earlier this year – so much so that it was demoted from its primetime 9pm slot to post-10pm news halfway through its run, falling to below 300,000 viewers.
Speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival, ITV’s entertainment commissioning editor Joe Mace explained: “We talk about taking risks and then we like to put it into action. As a format, people loved the idea of creating a neighbourhood where you were judging people and how they would behave as families. It had a lot of really good ITV ingredients.
“One of the lessons we’ve learned from that is that people come to ITV for fast turnaround, live reality TV first and foremost. They’ve been served the best in those shows in Love Island and Big Brother and we should stick to that probably.
“There’s a lot of great post-produced reality TV out there, and that’s perhaps not the lane ITV should be in. That’s our ambition now.”
An ITV spokesperson confirmed: “We’re really proud of The Neighbourhood – it was big, bold and ambitious – and we’d like to thank everyone in front of and behind the camera for all of their hard work and dedication in launching the series. Unfortunately, it won’t be returning for a new series currently.”
