Third of UNBOXED audience figures ‘came from Countryfile’

A large chunk of official audience figures for UNBOXED festival came from viewers watching Countryfile on the BBC, it has emerged.

Organisers of the £120m project said a total of 18.1m people had “engaged” with the project, consisting of 2.8m people attendeding events last year and a further 13.6m engaging with broadcast and digital content.

The Times reports that the 13.6m figure included five million Countryfile viewers watching an episode in October when the programme reported on one of the projects, Green Space Dark Skies.

Speaking in parliament, Labour MP Nick Smith raised the Countryfile figures with civil servants and ministers and questioned whether the festival had "made the impact it intended".

"The department [DCMS] reported in November that the figure for audience engagement was just over 18m," he said. 

"That sounds a reasonable reach, but it turns out that a one-hour “Countryfile” TV special was doing the heavy lifting with five million viewers — nearly a third of the total."

Smith has asked for the matter to be considered as part of a wider evaluation currently taking place.