I would be very interested to see the air time share of each contestant in figures.

I realise that celebs doing the trial will naturally get more air time, but for the remaining people, the air time is clearly not even close to being evenly split.

So far, we've seen a lot of Jake and Kendra (far too much, imo.) In the first couple of days, it was all about Gemma.

I want to see more of Michael and Vicki. We've seen next to nothing of them so far. Nadia has barely had a look in and even Foggy and Tinchy are hardly shown now.

Of course, there will be certain people who play up more for the cameras to grab attention, but in the course of 24 hours, the others must have said or done something that could be included in the edit. They can't all just be sitting around all day saying and doing nothing at all. I don't necessarily want to only see the ones who are clearly attention grabbing - I want to see the ones who are just being themselves too.

The uneven distribution of airtime surely serves to manipulate the public in their voting choices. People aren't going to vote for, say, Michael to do a trial when they could be forgiven for pretty much forgetting he's in there.

Maybe it's all just centred on revenue, as opposed to entertainment - focussing heavily on those whose potential fan-base are more likely to pick up the phone and vote. But I feel strongly that this does not make for interesting viewing and with the high number of long commercial breaks, surely most of their revenue comes from advertising - and sponsorship?

If anyone is actually calculating the amount of non-trial air time each celeb is given, I'd love to see it written down.

Well said totally agree, it indeed would be good to see the figures

Nadia has got to do a trial I like her but she is boring

How can we tell if she (or some of the others) are boring if they are rarely given any air time? I think the only thing I've learnt about Michael is that he likes cashew nuts! I know even less about Vicky & not much more about Tinchy.

Air time ?
I would like to see an Add Time split myself to see just how much program time the actually broadcast in amongst the adds/voting numbers/before the break etc etc.

At a guess (?) no more than 30 min's

Boring? She was the favourite on here after the first four episodes. I loved her and Craig in the slammer - we got to see a fair bit of them due to the separation. Ever since the camps merged, she's been forgotten.

We've seen nothing of Michael and Vicki. Tinchy and Foggy haven't had much more airtime than them, either.

We get lots of Jake and Jimmy, with Kendra and Melanie getting decent airtime, too. Everyone else might as well not be there.

Air time and favourable/unfavourable edits are the tools of the manipulation trade.

I haven't got any figures to hand (hopefully somebody can work it out) but I'd be amazed if Jimmy Bullard isn't miles ahead in air time. It's the Bullard show don't you know?

Okay, so I went on ITV Player and got to work on counting up the seconds of airtime each celebrity got on an episode. Now, I've only done one episode, I might do more if I can be bothered, but here's the results of that episode:

Episode 6:
Jake - 13 minutes, 33 seconds
Kendra - 8 minutes, 40 seconds
Jimmy - 8 minutes, 20 seconds
Edwina - 5 minutes, 49 seconds
Nadia - 3 minutes, 26 seconds
Vicki - 2 minutes, 49 seconds
Melanie - 2 minutes, 17 seconds
Foggy - 1 minute, 58 seconds
Michael - 1 minute, 46 seconds
Tinchy - 1 minute, 11 seconds

Bush Tucker Trial:
From the moment Kendra spoke to Ant & Dec (10:06) to the moment they said goodbye (17:38), none of that was included in the above stats. Nor was the end bit of the episode/the vote (it might be you). I also excluded the "coming up" clips, so the above is based purely on 'the camp' edits alone.

Just to recap on the episode, it was the day Kendra was brought into the CIA and they got the hot tub, hence the four CIA members being key players in this particular episode.
One thing I noticed, though, is that Nadia got zero Bush Telegraph time, and the only time she appeared is when she was with Jake. If it hadn't been for Jake 'flirting' with her (telling how good she looks in the morning, asking if they're on a date etc.) then she wouldn't have featured at all. The only reason she's so high is because her 'scenes' were all about Jake - it had nothing to do with the show being interested in her, it was all about Jake.

The show is Jake central and I think they'll be pushing him to win to try and prove some kind of point to those of us asking "why the hell is he there?"

Fantastic, Reserved, thank you!

If you do get time to do the same for other episodes, please do - it's very interesting to see it in black and white.

I'll attempt to do the same myself - if I can find the time.

Ive changed my mind Nadia is not borring