President Obama plans some TV time on Tuesday December 1st (regarding Afghanistan).

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/11/24...cember-1/34584

It's not particularly helpful for FOX (who probably won't show it anyway) ABC or NBC.

Recently, he has tended to place calls to higher ups at CBS Corp, General Electric and Disney to try and agree a more convenient time (in the summer, he was famously forced to reschedule when NBC said they wouldn't move an AGT special with Susan Boyle). So it could move.

If he goes at 8pm, CBS would be fine as they have a repeat scheduled. NBC will drop Jay Leno and put The Biggest Loser from 9-11pm. ABC could also drop The Forgotten from 10pm and run everything an hour later, but they have a Disney special which they probably want to put in the 8pm hour. FOX have a 2 hour SYTYCD? so any time on Tuesday is bad for them and I can't see them dropping SYTYCD.

I can't believe they show these programmes on what seems to be a never-ending loop in the first place, never mind repeat them.

Some new ideas are sorely needed.

ITV won't want IAC Now to clash with the football.


0.38m viewers watched Dr Who on BBC HD, giving him a grand total of 10.32m

ABC could easily drop an episode of Scrubs and move one of the specials to 9pm or more likely air both Specials on the Wednesday displacing The Middle and just double up at a later date. FOX never get good ratings do they'll show SYTYCD instead.

He's certaintly had a lot of speeches compared to his predeccesors and I would imagine the networks were a bit fed up losing ad time last season especially FOX which was affected the most.

Maybe 30% was a peak on Monday? Or maybe extra people tuned in on Monday hoping for some Celeb tittle-tattle.

Hmm, I'm sure there's a substantial non-football audience out there who'd happily watch the IAC spin-off. Anyone who is interested in football isn't going to abandon the footy, but there is still an audience out there who would like an alternative.

I expect most people turned to local radio, where the updates would have been more detailed.

Of course, unless last week was a RAJAR diary week, we won't get figures.

As I said a few pages back, it's because Jedward were on.

Maybe it was just a peak when those two lads were interviewed, then? Seems odd if the whole show got 30%.

Wonder if that'll lead to E4 delaying it further then, at least until after CBB. Looks like there are 13 episodes and the pilot to show, so will there be nine episodes from April?

Any ratings for the tennis on BBC3 last night, and also on Sky Sports - especially as from 10.30pm the BBC lost the pictures for almost half an hour, but apparently Sky didn't (despite the BBC telling us the whole world had lost pics!), so be interesting to see if there was any notable increase in Sky's audience for that period.

Digiguide have kind of updated until 25th although as you'd expect it's full of gaps.

However, they have Christmas Day on ITV1 as

19:00 Emmerdale
20:00 Coronation Street
21:00 Poirot : Appointment with Death

Which is about as uninspiring as you could get really.

The Fattest Man in Britain is down for 21:00 on Christmas Eve.

So the BBC will have

EastEnders 630
DR who 7pm
SCD 8pm
EastEnders 910/930

Well, I think it just underlines that its no ratings behemoth. Did well in the demo's in the summer when theres little opposition (though overall viewership was never huge), but its struggling pretty badly against NCIS, The Biggest Loser and Dancing with the Stars.

Of course, the UK version's opposition on ITV doesn't look like it will be particularly tough - so BBC One are likely to be looking at at least 5m simply by default. I'm not expecting anything much more than the 6m region. That'd be OK, and likely returnable - but it aint a home run.

That's interesting as UK TV Guide has updated until Christmas Eve, but Christmas Day at the moment is a massive blank.

So, the state we are in at the moment:

- all schedules up until 18th December confirmed.
- schedules from 19th to 24th/25th December provisional.

SCD Final night looks interesting, and in my view puts Merlin in an absolutely abysmal slot:

Saturday 19th December 2009
BBC One
17:30 - Merlin
18:20 - Strictly Come Dancing
19:40 - Casualty
20:30 - The National Lottery Draws
20:40 - Strictly Come Dancing: Results Show
21:40 - Live at the Apollo
22:10 - BBC News

I can see that changing because Casualty looks too early in that schedule, and The Impressions Show appears to have gone missing.

ITV's schedule for the Saturday is TBA - quite literally.

Sunday 20th December has TBA for both BBC One and ITV1 from 8pm onwards, that's because Antiques Roadshow is on at 7pm. You would say Countryfile would be there, but the Christmas edition of Countryfile is airing on Thursday 17th December.

Monday 21st December in the 9pm slot has Crimewatch on BBC One and "The Millies: A Night of Heroes" from 9pm to 10:30pm on ITV1. ITV1 could actually amazingly win that 9pm slot. Uninspiring from both channels, though.

Tuesday 22nd December and Wednesday 23rd December show no major surprises - TBA's along with the usual.

Christmas Eve - Provisional Schedule
BBC One
06:00 - BBC Breakfast
08:50 - The Sarah Jane Adventures
09:20 - Doctor Who
10:05 - Shaun the Sheep
10:20 to 13:05 - TBA
13:05 - BBC News
13:20 to 17:50 - TBA
17:50 - BBC News
18:10 - To Be Announced (FILM?)
19:30 - EastEnders
20:00 to close - To Be Announced

ITV1
18:15 - ITV News and Weather
18:30 - To Be Announced (YBF probably)
19:00 - Emmerdale
19:30 - To Be Announced
20:00 - Emmerdale
20:30 - Coronation Street
21:00 - The Fattest Man in Britain

Aah, the joys of Christmas Eve - Doctor Who on at 9:20am!

I can guarantee that EastEnders will scheduled at the same time as Corrie at least once in the early schedules. There will be long discussions on here and then when the final schedules come out they will be completely different.

They will probably be normal episodes of Tonight or Panorama scheduled in error as well!

Don't understand why the SCD Final is on so early. Here, they have the opportunity to make it the 'centrepiece' of their Saturday night and it's on at 18:20 ?

Could the Ant & Dec Christmas Show actually be going out that Saturday or Boxing Day more likely ?

I expect a solid hit is all they want because the shows they have had the last three years have all been unsuccessful although Your Country Needs You did better compared to When Will I Be Famous and The One and Only. Mind you, everyone thought DoI was going to be a flop and look how that turned out.

Most likely.
Id like 630 and 9ish slots for EastEnders xmas day.
Guess we will find out tommorow

Saturday: MOTD has to start at 10.30 so that influences the scheduling.
Don't know why they need an hour long Strictly results show. It was only 45 minutes last year.
And if they must have an hour long results show they don't need any post Strictly comedy.

Sunday: Cranford is apparantly 2 feature length episodes. I predict it'll be on the Sundays either side of Xmas and no reason why it shouldn't start at 8pm.

Monday: I said Crimewatch would be on on the 21st. Uninspiring, maybe, but it's a monthly show so it has to go somewhere and it qualifies as public service broadcasting.

Yes, somehow it seems that Phil loses all sense of proportion, tweeting excitedly when his glossy morning extravaganza actually beats a collection of pre recorded and repeated daytime filler shows. Perhaps he should take note of the other 364 days of the year and give a generous tweet to the opposition!

Paradox got the ratings it deserved - though had it not launched against Tits Out it would surely have started with 5m+. Be interesting whether its sheer awfulness attracts viewers as word of mouth spreads. Crossroads was very popular don't forget.

'Tits' definitely sagging now it's no longer boosted by its KP implants. I imagine it'll droop further without its sole USP.

I bet no-one at all is watching tonight..


Probably should have been on BBC1, eh George?


Or confirm that it hasn't really slipped at all - remember, the only ratings that count are the proper ones reported by BARB.

Note that ep1 of TG pulled a very healthy 2.2m for its midweek repeat - so that puts it on 8.6m+ for ep1.

Might be TG's most popular series ever...


Hope that regular participants on this thread aren't all represented on the new panel - some ITV shows would break the 20m barrier...


Add the 4% uplift and it was really 10.73m

As a point of interest, do ITV HD's ratings get reported separately or do they form part of ITV1's? As I understand it, you access ITV HD through the red button - it's not a channel as such - so does that make a difference? I understood that interactive red button services count towards the channel from which the viewer accesses them.


This also looks dodgy because, yet again, the bungling Beeb have allowed SCD to get to a final with just 2 contestants. Rather than pad this out as if there were 3, they need to reduce the running length. I would have the main show on at 7pm for one hour and the results for 30 minutes at 9pm after Casualty and the lotto draw. Live at the Apollo might do better in that 9.30pm slot than The Impressions Show Compilation, with an SCD inheritance too, so would be a sensible move.


If ITV want to make a profit out of it, I guess it has to go out opposite SCD - would the ad revenue from Rennie, DFS, SCS, Sofa Factory etc on Boxing Day even cover the production cost?

I don't think it has to do - it's "round about 10.30", give or take. On SCD Final day last year, I recall that SCD ended at 10.10pm and was followed by Outnumbered, and then the News - so MOTD must have been 11pm that week.

Considering SCD so often has lost an extra contestant along the way you'd think they'd start with one spare, and simply if no one is forced to quit have a double elimination one week.

So if this is the ITV Christmas night offering how did people think it will rate?

19:00 Emmerdale (5m)
20:00 Coronation Street (7.6m)
21:00 Poirot : Appointment with Death (4.4m)
(My predictions in brackets)

Against a BBC schedule possibly like this:

18:30 Doctor Who (11.2m)
19:35 Eastenders (11.5m)
20:05 SCD (8.0m)
21:05 EastEnders (12.0m)
21:35 The Royle Family (9.2m)

Im guessing the schedule will overrun by a few minutes as it always does on BBC One with Doctor Who being the reason.