It does seem as it The Bill is unable to peel off the 55+ age range that dominate NT's audience.

STV probably did better with Scotland Revealed than some of the previous offerings in the 9pm Thursday slot.

EDIT: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/enterta...6908-21694017/

Scotland Revealed got 344k and beat the ITV national share

Not necessarily. The concept of a "first view" on BBC3 and 4 has already been established, so showing "next week's episode" on HD might work to give the platform a boost.

K

Actually thinking back didn't Heroes do as you suggest on HD? (I stopped watching after the first few eps of S2.)

My suggestion was a simple "now on BBC2 is PROG A, followed at 9 by Top Gear. But for those with BBCHD you catch watch the new Top Gear now."

(It would also give the BBC a bit of flexibility regarding scheduling.)

Harry Hill back on 10th October if anyone is interested.

Interested and delighted.

Don't they have Big Top as well?

Thank god. He should be on every week. Well, that might be overkill, but hire some more writers and they could definitely do it much more often.

I think that's pre-watershed, so could do Wednesdays at 7.30pm once Nigel Slater's finished, with Waterloo Road at 8pm.

Yes, plus a new sketch show for Jon Culshaw (The Impressionists or something like that).

I think these two shows may be pre-watershed family comedies. There are 6 weeks between the end of Watchdog and Christmas. Maybe they'll be scheduled there. Maybe Big Top is so awful they've decided to dump it up against Coronation Street.

I believe BBC1 have yet another cookery show for the Autumn season, so I'd imagine that that might take over Nigel Slater's slot.

Also that week Harry Hill is back (10h - 16th)...

Joan Does Glamour
Piers Morgan Life Stories

'Murderland' drama is the following week

According to The Times this morning, Tony Ball, in the frame for the ITV job, was hoping to turn ITV towards subscriptions with viewers having to pay to watch soaps such as Corrie and Emmmerdale.

I guess it works better on Monday/Friday with people coming back from EastEnders rather than following Emmerdale on the Thursday, where if people haven't bothered with Emmerdale ITV risk losing them for the whole hour.



Wasn't Life on Earth a few years back Attenboroughs big swan song - yet he seems to have done a big series every year since.


... so therefore something the schedulers are likely to be stupid enough to do. IIRC when it premiered on BBC3 last year it was Sunday nights - still think BBC3 should have it first really.


And in other news, reported today that a deal will be announced within the next couple of weeks for the US version of The X Factor. It'll be on FOX, but without Cowell, who will stay with Idol. Of course the press link Louis Walsh and Cheryl Cole to it, but I can't see the US networks being interested in them. Paula Abdul seems a good bet though.

He kept saying during all those interviews that he wasn't retiring, but no-one seemed to take any notice. It was the just the last of his own personal series of shows he had done over the years. He is still presenting and narrating other shows.

7.6m for Strictly last night. That's rather poor, and the fact it's lost nearly a million viewers since last week doesn't bode well for tonight at all. Strictly always starts low and rises, so this dip must be somewhat concerning. It's still a great rating, but not by Strictly's standards.

Derren Brown unsurprisingly tumbled again, and Peep Show fell back to normal levels, which is a real shame as it deserves far more.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/a1792...6-million.html

the celebs just aren't high profile enough this year IMO, too many BBC employees. It looks like the BBC Xmas Office Party at some points.

Well, in fact it lost around 600,000 (rather short of "nearly a million"), and was broadly on par with last Saturday's figure as I recall.

I certainly don't see any real need to be concerned.

Wow 7.6 million avaerage for a 90 minute show is really bad, obviously

It is sooo annoying that DS lists the soap ratings in a seperate article. We need to start a campaign to get them to list all ratings in the one article and give us a complete picture. Strictly's down, but so are a lot of the other programmes mentioned. (Derren Brown. Peep Show). We need to know if the soaps dropped too. (V good weather last night.)

Last week's rating was 8.44m, so it's lost 850,000 (which is nearly a million), and last Saturday's episode was against The X Factor, whereas it wasn't last night. The equivalent Saturday episode last year got 8.7m (with a 20 minute X Factor clash), so it isn't exactly a brilliant result.


Put it into context and you'll see it is a disappointing result for the programme in question.

You are Simon Cowell and I claim my £5.

True, I was (rather stupidly it would appear) going by the DS report which is obviously wrong:

"The ratings for the episode are down over 600k on last week's opener, which had 8.44m (35.7%) in the same slot."



The point that I was making was that the audience could very well have levelled out (after an initial surge of interest due to the Alesha issue and other bits of tabloid publicity), with the same number now following the programme as last week (regardless of day).

And in whatever context, I still don't see any cause for concern, it's not as if it's a big drop, and you can hardly compare year on year for the opening one, as a Friday opening is not comparable to a Saturday opening anyway.

Not really, it was a pleasant evening and very busy where i was in town last night, maybe not a picture of the whole country but everything else was down.

Although to be fair, 850,000 is over 600,000.

How can you compare this years ratings to last year when there wasnt an friday show last year. Less than an 2% drop for an show with the less popular dances [ ie ballroom] and no public voting.