Don't patronise me.

Regional news should have fifteen minute bulletins throughout the day wishing a Merry Christmas to everyone, with 10 minutes of their lighter moments from the year.

The demise of regional ITV is why it is in the problem it is now. If ITV were nationalised, or at least given a public service remit, it would actually be playing a decent role in broadcasting, instead of churning out endless reality shows.

Everything's OK in moderate doses, but ITV have Popstar to Opera Star to come in January. It seems the older audience is being ignored, and BBC1 have a monopoly on the older viewers.

This is terrible, and I think ITV have to split private and public responsibility in order to compete with Sky on one level and the BBC on another.

You say regional TV is unsustainable, when it is plainly obvious it serves a brilliant domestic breeding ground for journalism, something that has been missed since its demise. But more importantly, it is also the breeding ground for new talent, and new programming. There is not one long running ITV show that was made by an independent production company. Not one. There might be in a few years, but I doubt an indepedent production company away from ITV's resources and standards would be able to make something like Coronation Street, Emmerdale or The South Bank Show.

Your purely commercial attitude towards ITV will see its demise. And of course, in the long term, pure commerciality leads to downfall. Take Who Wants to be a Millionaire? for example, they killed that!

Thank you, rant over.

This is definitely not fantastic, why the hyperbole?!?!?!

I'm still impressed. Last year was Leeds in the rain wasnt it? Leeds are the Newscastle or Man Utd of the lower divisions.

The comparisons for MOTD will depend on the match line ups for the various days versus last year plus the start times may be different?

MOTD last year if you remember found itself up against The X Factor's result show.

I wouldn't worry too much. It's still well over 3m in the officials. More people are recording now than they have done, but it's not surprising with competition like I'm a Celebrity.

I still opted to watch FlashForward live and whizz through IAC after personally. The latter is struggling with one high profile exit after another and is destined for a very limp end to the series IMO.

The FF break was well handled by the Five announcer, and the revealed doc did well to draw 800k after, so I'm expecting a strong return in the new year.

Ok Mr Non- Commercial Spirt of ITV Past,
Would you really like to make all regional news teams work all day on Christmas Day to fulfill your fantasy schedule? Would they rather be at home with their families? I know what I would prefer.

Terrible. Do ITV have to show the highlights? They'd be better off sticking on a good movie.

The older viewers (watching BBC) in 10 years won't be with us.
The younger viewers (watching ITV) in 10 years will still be with us.

...hence why ITV are focusing on their younger-demo because it'll be them who are the main core audience in 10 years time.

Where does that leave a show like Corrie then which attracts the most older views out of any soap?

Yes people will die but at the same time other people will get older and fit into the older demo to replace them. There will always be an older demographic of viewers there just like there always has been.

Oh of course, but if you're young and 'grow up' with ITV then you're more likely to watch them in 5/10 years time IMO.

The Best of Bullseye is simply not strong enough for Christmas Day primetime. It would get absolutely hammered in that slot. You can't move the soaps out of primetime and then put filler like that on!

Dancing on Ice is fine, but Christmas Night with Vernon Kay sounds like my idea of a nightmare. I'm not sure whether or not it would rate well but I don't particularly want to find out either!

And Love Actually is such a dull film that's been done to death on the ITV channels over the past few years. It's normally reserved for ITV2 now which is for the best really.

All in all, it's certainly uninspiring enough for it to be something ITV would consider. Minus the soaps in the daytime which doesn't seem very likely.

Apart from X Factor, IAC and BGT months they're not doing a particularly good job of bringing in younger viewers.

The 16-34 peaktime 2009 average for ITV1 till the end of October was 15.0%. In that same period BBC1's average was 15.4%. Taking November into account, both will be about the same.

Considering ITV are apparently focussing more on bringing in 16-34s, they should be ahead of BBC1!

Nice to make the effort but terrible. Having an episode of Corrie with just one family watching the Queen? What would be the point? Bullseye seems a bit of a random show to bring back especially for a "best of" ie "1 hour of repeats." Dancing on Ice is far too long at 90 minutes, or should at least be split in two, depending on whether its one of those "results" things. Christmas Night would work, but maybe not with Vernon Kay. Dont think a 30 minute news slot at 10 will work tbh, especially local news. What maybe better

1500 Queen Speech
1515 Film
1715 News
1730 Emmerdale
1830 Dancing On Ice
1930 Coronation Street
2000 Dancing On Ice
2030 Coronation Street
2100 Christmas Night With....
2200 Benidorm/Comedy special
2300 2000 Comedy Film

I would have thought myself that it would have been the other way around.

What's the 16-34 demo like for the other ITV channels?

This would make a good Christmas movie on one of the terrestrials in a year or two:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0841027/

Very TV friendly film, rather funny as well.

Seven
18:00 Seven News 1.37m
18:30 Today Tonight 1.28m
19:00 How I Met Your Mother (R) 0.82m
19:30 The Force (R) 1.03m
20:00 Destroyed In Seconds 1.17m
20:30 FlashForward 0.98m
*top rated show of the day in 25-54 demo with 0.61m viewers

Nine
18:00 Nine News 1.08m
18:30 A Current Affair 1.01m
19:00 Australia's Funniest Home Video Show: Daily Edition 0.92m
19:30 Two and a Half Men (R) 1.09m
20:00 The Big Bang Theory (R) 1.05m
20:30 The Mentalist (R) 1.22m

Ten
17:00 Ten News at Five 0.91m
18:00 The Simpsons (R) 0.74m
18:30 Neighbours 0.78m
19:00 The 7pm Project 0.83m
*averaged 0.13m for late night repeat
20:00 Futurama 0.68m
20:30 Supernatural 0.51m

ABC1
20:00 Elders with Andrew Denton 1.01m

SBS
19:30 Top Gear Polar Special (R) 0.67m

Nine wins with a 27.9% share of primetime.

---------------------------------------------------

So, day 1 of the non ratings period and The 7pm Project put in a very respectable performance for its first daily 60 minute edition, thanks to the weaker competition. Home and Away is now on hiatus for the summer and Nine are resting the daily Two and a Half Men repeats. (well, at 7pm at least)

Oddly The Mentalist seems to be doing better in repeat form than it did first time around which could be good news for Nine, especially since it won't have FlashForward to contend with next week.

Overall considering we are now into summer, there wasn't that much of an audience dropoff with some shows including Neighbours up on last week. But Ten did very poorly from 8pm onwards.

Home & Away seems to have finished very early this year!

Don't suppose you know the ratings from New Zealand?

Here's the top 15 for last week. (22nd-28th November)

1. One News (TVOne) 672,000
2. Border Security (TVOne) 639,000
3. MasterChef Australia (TVOne) 538,000
4. Mucking In (TVOne) 532,200
5. Piha Rescue (TVOne) 518,200
6. The Mentalist (TV2) 512,700
7. Packed to the Rafters (TVOne) 511,500
8. Shortland Street (TV2) 505,600
9. Close Up (TVOne) 503,000
10. Coronation Street (TVOne) 488,300
11. National Bank Country Calendar RPT (TVOne) 476,100
12. Two and a Half Men RPT (TV2) 474,800
13. Australian Idol (TV2) 430,300
14. The Big Bang Theory (TV2) 420,400
15. Motorway Patrol RPT (TV2) 411,800

And the top 3 highest rated shows of the year so far are as follows:

1. One News- 18th May (TVOne) 824,700
2. South- 30th August (TVOne) 818,600
3. Dancing With The Stars- 21st April (TVOne) 812,300

Source: AGB Nielsen Research

Thanks. Another country where the news is the most watched show

NZ television isn't up to much I'm afraid. Looking at their top shows the vast majority are imports from either the US, UK or Australia. It does make me feel a bit daft for complaining about British TV - sure, it's not great at the moment, but it could be a whole lot worse!

Fantastic Rating! This is really a huge hit for BBC2, who would have thought it?

That's pretty terrible - no offence. The ridiculous amount of News you had on is absolutely clueless. Your Coronation Street idea about one family sitting down to watch the Queen's speech is novel enough but it wouldn't do brilliantly - perhaps 4m at 2.30pm? Also you put a 15 minute episode at 3.15pm...

Christmas Night with Vernon Kay is a stomach churning idea - you really think that would pull 10m+? Atrocious. And Love Actually is a nice enough film but as has been said, is probably better suited to ITV2.


ITV would just need to pull out some big hitters, really, to erode - not beat, that much is very hard - the BBC:


6.00pm Emmerdale
Hour-long episode. Festive edition of the Yorkshire based soap.

7.00pm Coronation Street
First of tonight's two special episodes as Christmas falls on the Street.

7.30pm Britain's Got Talent Christmas Special
A renunion of the past winners and other memorable participants for a Christmassy talent fest, complete with judges Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and Amanda Holden and of course, Ant and Dec!

8.50pm Harry Hill's Christmas Crackers
Harry Hill takes a festive look at Christmas TV from times gone by and its various bloopers...

9.10pm Coronation Street
The second and final episode of tonight's exciting trip to the Street.

9.45pm The Snow Men
A landmark, beautiful period drama set in December 1945 in the aftermath of the World War II, focusing on a group of soldiers returning home in time for Christmas, some to their families, some to an alien world. A bittersweet, yet ultimately heartwarming, quintessentially Christmassy drama.

11.00pm ITV News

11.10pm Film


My idea and I personally think that would work a treat - it would be costly but with good promotion and if The Snow Men was of high quality it would get good reviews in the RadioTimes and other papers and people would tune in.

It could always be repeated later anyway.

Harry Hill would look back on the last decade or two of Christmas TV and the various ridiculous dramas in the soaps, the revived sitcoms and the lesser known jewels!

And Britain's Got Talent would pull a great number, too. Plus, with Corrie in 2 parts (and I'd order a big big storyline thread over the top of the usual family interactions, for a cliffhanger at the end of part one), ITV would have a very strong night.

Having said that, the BBC would win with a test card - but I do think ITV would eat a significant portion of the BBC's ratings with that schedule.

"The Best of Bullseye" would get hammered in any slot at any time of the year. It's hard to believe that people say TV today is shite when that awful programme got such massive ratings. Good riddance.

Well, there was no point doing the highlights on Sunday night as only one match had been played that day, which they'd already shown live. Presumably it's to make the most of the rights.

Obviously they have to do them for Saturday's matches for the eighteen games that weren't live on TV, but the problem is that it's opposite Match of the Day, which clearly has more appeal for the casual viewer. When it was the other way round in 2001-04, when ITV had the Premiership and the Beeb the FA Cup, the Beeb scheduled the highlights for midnight to avoid a clash. Obviously The Football League Show complicates it still further.

The other option for ITV would be Sunday morning like they used to do with the Football League.

There's never been regional news on ITV on Christmas Day, not even when the regions were in their pomp. In fact it wasn't long ago that there was only one national news bulletin on both the BBC and ITV on Christmas Day.