These links lead to links to some vintage christmas schedules.

I notice that on Xmas day 1992, ITV led up to the Queen at 3pm with two and a half hours of vintage ITV sit-com.

Get Some In, Rising Damp and Watching are three of my all-time ITV favourites. (As a rule, I tend to prefer BBC comedy.)

See thing is, at the moment ITV1 have the soaps as:

6:30 Emmerdale
7:30 CS

So, Doctor Who would be oppiste Corrie.

If I were the BBC, I'd go for this, considering where ITV have put the soaps.

15:00 The Queen
15:10 Top of the Pops
16:10 Shrek the Third
17:45 News/Weather
18:00 EastEnders
18:30 Dr Who
19:30 Strictly Come Dancing
20:30 The Gruffalo
21:00 EastEnders
21:30 The Royle Family
22:30 Catherine Tate


They would win every slot IMO.

Finalised about 2.15 - then ITV will make last minute changes to Corrie etc at 2.28pm just to screw over BBC1...


Well they probably won't put Catherine Tate out before 10.30, so if they do end up going with the above, then the final G&S would slot in neatly at 10pm. Or if they want to show that on NYD, then they could hold over the 5th ep from Christmas Eve to 10pm Xmas Day - might be a good way of promoting the final episode.

Nonsense, these are joint ITV, US network WGBH, Agatha Christie Ltd / Chorion productions and I expect they sell very well internationally.

They also provide a lot of repeat potential.

If I were at BBC1 I would just ignore ITV. Let them put the soaps wherever they like. ITV aren't that big a force on Christmas Day.

ITV will be moving Corrie out the way of Doctor Who, not the other way around.

It would, and I quite like that - but I'm not sure about The Gruffalo so late. Sure, it worked a treat for W&G last year, but that was the flagship show for Christmas 2008 and was always going to appeal to viewers from 8-88 (and boy, did it just), not sure a children's book adaptation is going to have that much mass appeal? It should certainly go out post-6pm to attract the widest possible audience.

I understand what you are saying, but I just think it has so much going for it being on at 20:30

The corrie viewers who don't want to watch some 2 hour non-christmassy drama will switch over to BBC1 for a nice half hour animation.

& I'm sure you will not disagree with me, once people are tuned into BBC1 on Christmas Day they are never ever going to want to switch over to ITV1, The only thing ITV1 have that brings in a half decent figure is Corrie, and that's ending just in time for viewers to switch over back to BBC1 for the Gruffalo

Edit - Plus, It's just ends when the kids have to start to go to bed and the parents will watch Gavins dad from G&S get murdered

If this is the structure for BBC One,

CHRISTMAS DAY

7.00 EastEnders
7.30 Doctor Who
8.30 EastEnders

then I'd do something like this for ITV1.

14:00 Xtra Factor : The Winners Story
15:00 The Queen
15:10 Film : Happy Feet
17:00 All Star Family Fortunes : Emmerdale v Corrie
17:45 ITV News
18:00 You've Been Framed ! at Christmas
18:30 Emmerdale
19:30 Coronation Street
20:30 Harry Hills TV Burp
21:00 Poirot : Appointment with Death
23:00 ITV News

Probably the best they can do, BBC One should still totally dominate.

Fortunately for ITV their Christmas Day has been every Sunday since October 11th

And EastEnders at 3.10pm on Christmas Day 1987 (the year after it got 30 million) - they'd never have it that early nowadays!

Doctor Who should go out after Strictly IMO.

3.00pm The Queen
3.10pm Top of the Pops
4.10pm Shrek the Third
5.40pm BBC News
5.50pm Strictly Come Dancing
6.50pm The Gruffalo
7.20pm EastEnders
7.50pm Doctor Who
9.00pm EastEnders
9.30pm The Royle Family
10.30pm Catherine Tate
11.00pm BBC News

The key November ratings period ("sweeps") which is used to determine ad rates in the US is now over. FOX improved 20% on last year but was the only one of the big 4 to go higher than 2008 due to World Series Baseball.

FOX - 3.6
ABC - 3.1
CBS - 3.0
NBC - 2.6

FOX usually doesn't win November sweeps, it's the first time ever in fact as a result of a longer and later World Series which drew higher ratings than it has for years. Sweeps months also occur in February and May where FOX usually wins thanks to American Idol. Slightly surprising to see ABC beat CBS.

NBC has the Winter Olympics which I think run through February so it will be fine by there. But once that's over and they have no more Sunday Night Football either, the gap is going to get quite a bit bigger between them and ABC/CBS.

I know why Christmas Day schedules are normally a big discussion point (including myself) as we see 'weird' schedules as not normal programme is on apart from soaps.

Why is it though that TV companies choose to do big shows for Christmas Day? These past few Sunday's have been a great opportunity for big ratings for programmes in the 9pm slot with near 30 million watching TV, whereas in the past few years on Christmas Day in the ~9pm slot (estimate) :

2008 - 24.5m
2007 - 24.0m

It seems slightly bizarre to me - not as many people watch now on Christmas Day as they used to, yet TV schedulers still put out big hitters - despite the fact that they could get bigger figures in other slots - i.e. in the run up to Xmas. Whether we'll see 26/27 million watching this year at Christmas, I dunno, but I doubt we will.

I think, the only broadcaster who is guilty of this is BBC. ITV have never been fussed about Christmas Day as we all know, but I think BBC may feel they have a duty to show 'big hitters' on Christmas Day. Can you imagine the fuss if BBC1 had an average line up for Christmas Day.

"LICENCE FEE PAYERS ROBED BY BBC THIS CHRISTMAS" would be the headline in The Daily Mail

The Mail will always find some way of attacking the BBC - the other year they went through the Christmas Radio Times and totted up the "record number of repeats from Scrooge BBC bosses", including things like late night signed repeats or narrative EE and Dr Who repeats on BBC3, but overlooking the fact that in the "golden age" of the 1980s these additional BBC channels didn't even exist, and the two they had generally closed down around midnight so no late night repeats were scheduled anyway. As I recall, some barmy MP picked up on the report and raised questions in the House...

im sure SCD is on Boxing day after the EastEnders episode
but it will all change

The Sunday night figures are probably skewed by a younger audience tuning in specifically for TXF who would not otherwise be watching television - they'd be Tw a ttering, updating MyFaceSpaceBook profiles, drinking alcopops on street corners, terrorising pensioners...

Christmas Day is always special because, despite changing times, it's TV's biggest day of the year, with the best programmes, and is still the only day of the year when anyone other than ad agencies, ITV executives and Ratings Thread obsessives are remotely interested in TV ratings - it's the only day that matters in ratings terms.

BBC should have EastEnders,DR who,Myfamily,EastEnders and make it hard as possible for ITV to place their soaps and see how they like it.

On the monday id have SCD at 650pm with EastEnders normal at 8pm

Almost entirely to do with tradition, I expect. And the fact that TV watching on Christmas Day is unlike almost any other day, because it is - mostly - being viewed by reasonably large groups of people together.

This means the mainstream entertainment on the big couple of stations usually win out in the remote wars - and the multichannel shares collapse. Think about it:

- On his own, Dad might rather watch Sky Sports News
- On her own, the teenage daughter might rather watch a music channel.
- On her own, Grandma might prefer to watch Touch of Frost repeats on ITV4.

But put them all together, and mainstream entertainment like Doctor Who might just be what wins out.

A more pertinent figure would be to add up the totals watching the five terrestrials on Christmas Day, compared to a normal Sunday. Might still be a bit lower than the recent Sunday's fuelled by XF/IAC - but the gap will be smaller, at least.

There's always kind of been two sets of ratings for breakfast TV - the 1m or so is the same measurement as the rest of TV, based on the average watching the show. The higher figure (up to around 8m) is based on the number watching for 15 minutes or more each morning, as of course the nature of TV means people dip in and out of it in between waking up and leaving the house.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz...ings-ever.html

This was from 2006. The BBC crushed everything in its path yet the mail still have to see the negative.

Actually its not always been the case that ITV have disregarded the 25th of December. They premiered Raiders of the Lost Ark on Christmas Day 1984 and got 19.35 million as a reward. Though it is hard to see them doing something similar today. Films did bring in huge audiences and I think ITV got the lions share of the big ones-so maybe they had the scope to "waste" one.

That's an astonishing piece!

Maybe GeorgeS moonlights for the Mail when he's not doing whatever job he does at ITV?

Ratings for Angela & Friends on Sky1?

Not too sure they would let Doctor Who finishing at 9pm as its late for the kids. I think its a great schedule though, sure to destroy anything on ITV.

Does anyone know the reason why The Daily Mail are so anti BBC?