It wasn't me.

He does have a problem though with shows he views as "granny fodder", which presumably includes Sunday night snooze-fare like Doc Martin.

I imagine he views them as schedule 'bed-blockers' preventing another weekly hour of ground-breaking singing contests, dancing contests, variety contests (singers preferred, or dancers), or bikini-clad celebrity worm-eating contests...

I thought "Murderland" was just a generic name for most of ITV's drama output these days...

- Blue Murder - police investigate a murder
- Rebus - police investigate a murder
- Trial & Retribution - police investigate a murder
- Lewis - police investigate a murder (classy highbrow version)
- Midsomer Murders - police investigate several murders (extra milky)
- Taggart - police investigate a murder
- Above Suspicion - police investigate a murder
- Whitechapel - police investigate a murder
- Law & Order - police investigate a murder
- A Touch of Frost - police investigate a murder
- Wire in the Blood - police investigate a murder
- Gunrush - police don't investigate a murder...

And what makes the statistics most remarkable is the very fact that all of these similarly labelled shows have completely different outlooks.

Each drama has its own quaintness about it, whilst on BBC1, shows have to merge together because they look the same, and can't break away from the mould (Rogue Traders going back into the Watchdog show for example, despite having broken away from the format before).

Everything about BBC primetime strikes me as daytime, generic crap.

Their 8pm, 9pm factual offerings are generally appalling, despite having a vast performance player in nature shows with Attenborough and brilliant & moving documentaries such as 'Wounded', which recently aired.

Programmes have to forget about demographics and 'tick box' scenarios (this is why Demons failed and so many of ITV's dramas recently).

Now I agree with you about X Factor and Britain's Got Talent being too similar now. If I were to make X Factor 'bigger' at all, I would've made the live shows even better, with lots of performances from comedians and worldwide singers, instead of ruining the audition process.

The judges had some credibility before for judging an act without the influence of an audience. That's why Piers Morgan would never be put in charge of a real singing contest. But it's funny to have him on Britain's Got Talent because he's so damn opinionated and helps to get a nation talking.

But Jay Hunt is really ruining the BBC, they have ruined Watchdog, and have you seen The Football League Show, Robbie??? and BBC1's Formula One coverage with Jake Humphrey, perhaps the worst sports presenter on the box. Back to ITV with Rider would be its best move.

Each BBC show is ACTIVELY trying to get its audience involved. Charlie Brooker did a skit on it in Screenwipe recently, and hit the nail on the head. The consumer culture, now riddling with the BBC, has dumbed down television.

And whilst you might not like the crime genre on ITV, it certainly works, and the writing is intelligent because they are adapted from novels or written specially from the acclaimed Jimmy McGovern for example.

ITV has dumbed down in the past, but I don't think X Factor and Britain's Got Talent is an example of dumbing down because that's just good fun.

But having competitions all the time IS dumbing down - and I hope that stops one day.

Some ratings in:

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/rating...006240.article

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/a1797...h-gok-wan.html

Fixer down to under 3m?

K

Awful for The Fixer and it was the best episode of the series so far imo. Everything seemed a little low last night all apart from Holby City.

Axe time I think

I think so too.

The first series of The Fixer was superb, but ITV left it far too long before series 2 (about eighteen months!!).

When it returned this month, clearly half of the people who watched s1 either couldn't remember why they liked it....or couldn't be bothered to find out. A 10:35pm repeat of s1 before s2 would have helped.

Prime Time Ratings for last week according to DS
Winners in Bold

Monday BBC1 24.7 ITV 25.9

Tuesday BBC1 23.3 ITV 15.8

Wednesday BBC1 17 ITV 26.4

Thursday BBC1 24 ITV 22.2

Friday BBC1 29.3 ITV 19.8

Saturday BBC1 29.8 ITV 25.3

Sunday BBC1 21.2 ITV 31.4

I was really surprised BBC1 won Saturday night, ITV did fantastic on Sunday, as BBC1 did on Friday.

Tuesday 29th September Overnights
BBC One
20:00- Holby City: 5.55m (24.2%)
21:00- Crimewatch: 3.81m (16.8%)
22:45- Richard Wilson: Two Feet in the Grave: 1.6m (15.2%)
* peak: 1.9m (13.5%)

BBC Two
20:00- MasterChef: The Professionals: 2.91m (12.7%)
21:00- The Choir - Boys Don't Sing Revisited: 2.59m (11.4%)
22:30- Newsnight: 900,000 (7%)

ITV1
20:00- Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?: 3.27m (14.2%)
21:00- The Fixer: 2.81m (12.4%)
22:35- To Catch a Paedophile: 1.4m (11.5%)
* peak: 1.7m (11%)

Channel 4
18:00- The Simpsons: 2.16m [inc. +1]
18:30- Hollyoaks: 1.63m [inc. +1]
20:00- How To Look Good Naked: 1.78m (8%) , +1: 199,000
21:00- Jamie's American Roadtrip: 2.1m (9.3%) , +1: 348,000
22:00- The Big Food Fight: 1.15m [inc. +1]
22:35- Derren Brown: Trick of the Mind: 620,000 (4.4%) , +1: 105,000 (1.7%)

Five
20:00- Warship: 1.3m (5.7%)
21:00- CSI: Miami: 2.26m (10%)
22:00- CSI:NY: 1.6m (9.1%)

BBC Four
21:00- Electric Dreams: 492,000 (2.3%)
* 12 month slot average: 192,800 (0.9%)
22:00- Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe: 361k (2.2%)

Discovery
22:00- Born Survivor: Bear Grylls: 47,400 (0.3%)
* 12 month slot average: 38,700 (0.2%)
* first four episodes of series averaged: 82,800 (0.5%)

E4 [inc. +1]
21:00- Hollyoaks Later: 797,000
22:00- Running in Heels: Roomates and Rivals: 256,000

Film4 [inc. +1]
19:00- The Family Stone: 161,000
21:00- The Transporter: 406,000

More4 [inc. +1]
22:00- True Stories: 209,000

ITV2
21:00- Jack Osbourne: Adrenaline Junkie: 362k (1.7%)

Primetime Shares
BBC One: 23.4%
ITV1: 14.9%
BBC Two: 9.8%
Channel 4: 6.8% (+1: 1%)
Five: 6.4%

All Day Shares
BBC One: 21.6%
ITV1: 16.2%
BBC Two: 8.0%
Channel 4 [inc. +1]: 7.3%
Five: 5.8%

Poor night for ITV1, getting one of its lowest Tuesday primetime shares of the year. The Fixer won't be recomissioned on those ratings. I think it was quite lucky to come back in the first place as its first series ratings weren't brilliant by any standard.

BBC Two did well between 8-10pm. Also Holby's rating looks like its highest in some time. Over on BBC Four, their new 9pm series got good ratings compared to usual.

With the exception of Five and possibly BBC One, that is a horrible set of ratings. When are ITV going to axe Millionaire? It's past its sell-by-date IMO.

Most watched programmes of the week
1 - 11.37m - The X Factor (Sun, ITV1)
2 - 9.61m - Coronation Street (Mon 19:32, ITV1)
3 - 9.19m - EastEnders (Mon, BBC1)
4 - 8.92m - Strictly Come Dancing (Fri, BBC1)
5 - 8.30m - Doc Martin (Sun, ITV1)
6 - 7.51m - Waking The Dead (Mon, BBC1)
7 - 6.85m - Emmerdale (Mon, ITV1)
8 - 6.29m - The National Lottery Draws (Sat, BBC1)
9 - 5.91m - Casualty (Sat, BBC1)
10- 5.77m - Merlin (Sat, BBC1)

6 BBC1, 4 ITV1. The Saturday X Factor episode had a big time-shift of 1.3m by the way.

Alternative Chart (BBC2, C4, Five)
1 - 3.58m - Match of the Day 2 (Sun, BBC2)
2 - 3.45m - Derren Brown: The Event (Fri, C4)
3 - 3.20m - The Secret Millionaire (Wed, C4)
4 - 3.03m - University Challenge (Mon, BBC2)
5 - 2.97m - Location, Location, Location (Wed, C4)
6 - 2.92m - MasterChef: The Professionals (Wed, BBC2)
7 - 2.91m - Jamie's American Roadtrip (Tue, C4)
8 - 2.81m - Mock the Week (Thu, BBC2)
9 - 2.42m - The Choir: Unsung Town (Tue, BBC2)
10- 2.39m - CSI Miami (Tue, Five)

Match of the Day 2 tops the alternative chart, I think that might be a first! The Peep Show just missed out on the top 10, coming in 11th place.

Multichannels
1 - 1.58m - What Katie Did Next (Thu, ITV2)
2 - 1.52m - Ford Super Sunday (Sun, Sky Sports 1)
3 - 1.21m - EastEnders (Tue, BBC3)
4 - 1.00m - Xtra Factor (Sat, ITV2)
5 - 0.93m - Film: I Am Legend (Sat, Sky3)
6 - 0.88m - Film: Night at the Museum (Thu, Film4)
7 - 0.88m - Film: Legally Blonde (Wed, BBC3)
8 - 0.85m - Come Dine with Me (Sun, More4)
9 - 0.76m - House Season 5 (Sun, Sky1)
10- 0.76m - Trinity (Sun, ITV2)

Trinity sneaked into the top 10 for its first episode. Don't think it will manage that again. EastEnders Tuesday episodes still rating really well even though the Emmerdale clashes have stopped.

Weekly Shares
BBC One: 21.1% (21.1%)
BBC Two: 7.3% (7.9%)
ITV1: 18.5% (17.4%)
Channel 4: 6.3% (7.1%)
Five: 4.5% (5.5%)
* () - same week last year

Soap Update:
Current yearly averages and year-on-year declines
Coronation Street: 9.18m (-362,000)
EastEnders: 8.20m (-189,000)
Emmerdale: 6.60m (-359,000)

Similar declines for the ITV soaps. EastEnders' loss is not much at all. although it should be noted that from August onwards there have been no weekly Emmerdale clashes like last year.

I think its suffering a poor leading in TBH. Last year it was doing 4m.

Anyway, what else did ITV have on Tuesdays at 8pm that beat WWTBAM?

Send in the Dogs?

Good timeshift by TXF!

So Strictly lost the clash by 2.1M?

Official ratings:

X Factor - 10.57m
Strictly Come Dancing - 8.43m

Difference of 2.14m.

Edit: You've changed your post !

Rates about the same and probably costs the same. Wasn't Millionaire costing something around £200k per hour (on average) to ITV and generating more in ad revenues? On that basis I think it will be around for a while yet.

Yeah I was comparing Sunday to Friday - sorry.

Still it must be humiliating for the mighty BBC which started the war to admit defeat.

Broadcast: http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/b...006238.article

If the cost of Millionaire is that, it would probably be making ITV a profit of around £200,000 per hour based on the current ratings. When Millionaire was at its peak, ITV must have been raking it in !

Why have Broadcast written the article before the schedules have even been confirmed? They could change at any time until 6pm tonight, and if they do, their article will be useless.

It looks like a near carbon copy of an article the Press Association did yesterday: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukp...u8gpGWT60sXwrQ

They do mention in the PA article that they're only "proposed TV schedules", while Broadcast fails to mention that.

£200,000 profit per episode seems pretty good, so no wonder they keep showing it. It should be doing better than 3.3m, though; it was getting 4m on Saturday nights in the Summer so I don't know what's gone wrong.

Out of interest, how did you work out the £200k per episode profit?

A 30 second advert costs an average of £4.60 to reach a thousand viewers these days. (Source: ZenithOptimedia, Times Online)

There's about 24 30-second adverts per hour.

So for a programme like Millionaire that gets about 3,500,000 viewers per episode (rough average), ITV would make £386,4000 per hour = roughly £400,000. This is based on the figures provided by that Zenith company, so take it as an estimation.

So if Millionaire does cost £200,000 per episode, then profit will be about that much as well.

Yes and ITV still lost the primetime ratings!