The Stichting Kijkonderzoek reported this on Sunday. In total, 1.7 million people watched the fire for at least one minute during the four hours. The viewing peak was around 8:30 p.m., when nearly 400,000 people had the fire lit. SKO suspects that this peak arose because many people had finished eating at that time and wanted to catch a glimpse of the broadcast out of curiosity.
With an average of 281,000 viewers, SBS6 did better business than on Christmas Day 2020. Then the Disney movie Frozen was broadcast at 8.30 pm. An average of 242,000 people watched this.
Varying reactions
The four-hour fire kept the spirits on Twitter very busy Saturday evening. The hashtags #fireplace and #sbs6 were trending topics on the platform for some time. Opinions about the fireplace are quite divided. Some of the twitterers think broadcasting a fire is nonsense, others say they think it’s a nice idea.
Nevertheless, the positive-minded also had a few criticisms. For example, several people are disturbed by the SBS6 logo that can be seen on the screen. “Looks good and soothing. But what I really don’t understand is that apparently no one at SBS6 came up with the idea to omit the logo,” someone writes, for example. Also the Christmas music that is played in the background is not appreciated by everyone.
SBS6 announced at the beginning of December that no film or TV program will be broadcast on Christmas Day in the evening, but images of a fireplace. With the initiative, the channel wanted to inspire people to pay more attention to each other during the holidays.