If you’re one of the many people who enjoyed the Beeb’s coverage of the World Champs last weekend and are hoping for more of the same, you could be disappointed, according to an article in today’s Guardian.

The article, titled “Grandstand’s extreme sports scare off viewers”, says that the BBC are unlikely to repeat their experimental coverage of what they term ‘extreme’ sports after ratings for the programme crashed last weekend. Apparently the extreme sports section managed an average of 881,000 viewers – or just one in 10 people watching TV – compared with 1.42 million for the comparable weekend last year.

You could argue that the very branding of the coverage as ‘extreme’ may have turned some viewers off, and hidden in the article is a clue that mtb didn’t fare quite so badly as some of the other sports, though it’ll still make you cringe: “Twenty-year-old episodes of Quincy and Perry Mason on BBC2 were watched by two and half times as many people, with one in four viewers opting to watch the US detectives over downhill mountain bike racing.”

In the thinnest of silver linings, the headline in the Guardian contrasts with that on the Beeb itself, “Extreme Grandstand goes down a storm”, and the corporation’s website has apparently received scores of appreciative emails from viewers. If you feel the same way but haven’t registered it, perhaps now’s a good time to do so. You can add your comments at the bottom of that page.