And another thing - you can't have the X Factor over 2 nights because then the Saturday programme wouldn't be the final, it would be the semi-final where the third place act is eliminated meaning you'd only have 2 acts on Sunday's final, and even the dimwits at the BBC know that 3 is the optimum number for a final in this type of programme.

Unless you have 4 acts in Saturday's "semi-final", in which case they'd have to start the series a week later in the summer, or start the Sunday shows a week later because they wouldn't have a spare audition show.

Unless you increase the number of acts.
Give all the judges four acts in the live final = 4 extra acts.
Or introduce a 5th category = 3 new acts and 1 new judge.
Then they could start the series 1 or 2 weeks earlier in the summer and/or have double-elimination weeks.

Not at all, Simon, don't mention it, just stick the cheque in the post. On second thoughts, don't do that, there's a post strike. Just pay the money straight into my account. You know the number. You know everything.




On Nov 7th when the Festival Of Rememberance pushes Strictly to an earlier slot and reduces the clash with TXF to 15 minutes, that 15 minutes would be the Strictly dance-off. Could Strictly possibly beat TXF during that 15 minute clash?. And, if it does, will Brucie hold an emergency press conference on the Monday to make sure everybody knows about it?


Meanwhile BBC3's premier of "the next episode of Spooks" will be on Fridays at 9pm, a full 47 hours after the BBC1 screening of the previous episode ends. Is this a ploy by BBC1 to reduce the number of Spooks fans watching it on BBC3 and increase the ratings on BBC1?

And on November 5th PC Stamp leaves The Bill. Finally, The Bill will beat the New Tricks repeats in the ratings (it hopes!). With heavy promotion this could maybe get above 6m (pro rata -allowing for STV opt-out)

But on American Idol they have 2 2 hour shows for the final on consecutive nights, one where the 2 acts (not 3) sing and another wherethey mainly have lots of the biggest acts performing live while the telephone numbers are pushed in front of the audiences faces. ITV1 could easily have X Factor on for 2 hours on the Saturday announcing the 3rd placed act (probably John and Edward) at the end of the show. As well as having a one hour show on the Sunday perhaps with the remaining contestants singing the winners song. And if ITV1 did want to show Royal Variety on the Sunday then how about splitting it in 2 around the X Factor.

19:00 Royal Variety part 1
20:00 X Factor
21:00 Royal Variety part 2
Though they will probably be best showing it on the Wdnesda like BBC1 did last year 19:30 to 22:00


You can have X Factor final over 2 nights as previously stated above in American Idol they split it over 2 nights. And anyway the term Semi Final and Quarter Final are wildly misused today anyway, look at BGT with its 5 semi finals, the only TV show to properly use the terms correctly apart from sport was Gladiators.

Murderland has got slated on the Murderland thread, will be interesting to see how that translates to viewers, if many switched off?

Monday 26th October 2009
BBC One
18:00 - BBC News at Six: 4.8m (24.5%)
18:30 - Regional News and Weather: 5.9m (27.9%)
19:00 - The One Show: 4.8m (22.3%)
19:30 - Inside Out: 3.4m (14.5%)
20:00 - EastEnders: 9.1m (37.4%)
20:30 - Panorama: 2.6m (10.6%)
21:00 - Life: 5.3m (21.9%)
22:00 - BBC News at Ten: 4.7m (23.9%)
22:25 - Regional News and Weather: 4.3m (24.6%)
22:35 - The Graham Norton Show: 2.2m (17.6%)
23:20 - The Apprentice USA: 800,000 (9.9%)

BBC Two
18:00 - Eggheads: 2.3m (11.9%)
18:30 - Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two: 2.7m (12.6%)
19:00 - Coal House at War: 1.3m (5.9%)
19:30 - An Island Parish: 1.7m (7.4%)
20:00 - University Challenge: 3.4m (13.8%)
20:30 - Restaurant in Your Home: 1.6m (6.7%)
21:00 - The World's Greatest Money Maker: Evan Davis meets Warren Buffett: 1.3m (5.2%)
22:00 - Have I Got News For You: 1.3m (6.7%)
22:30 - Newsnight: 900,000 (6.9%)
23:20 - Charley Boorman: Sydney to Tokyo by Any Means: 400,000 (5.9%)

ITV1
18:30 - ITV Evening News and Weather: 3.9m (18.3%)
19:00 - Emmerdale: 7.4m (34.2%)
19:30 - Coronation Street: 9.8m (41.3%)
20:00 - Tonight: 2.9m (12.1%)
20:30 - Coronation Street: 9.4m (38.9%)
21:00 - Murderland: 5.5m (22.8%)
22:00 - News at Ten and Weather: 2.8m (14.5%)
22:35 - FILM: Crank: 1.2m (11.6%)

Channel 4
17:00 - The Paul O'Grady Show: 1.9m (13%)
18:00 - The Simpsons: 2.3m (11.7%)
18:30 - Hollyoaks: 1.7m (8.2%)
19:00 - Channel 4 News: 800,000 (3.4%)
19:55 - 3 Minute Wonder: 700,000 (2.9%)
20:00 - Dispatches: 1.5m (6.3%)
21:00 - Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo: 1m (4.5%)
22:20 - Ugly Betty: 600,000 (4.4%)
23:20 - Wife Swap USA: 400,000 (6.2%)

Five
17:00 - Five News with Natasha Kaplinsky: 800,000 (6.2%)
17:30 - Neighbours: 1.5m (9.5%)
18:00 - Home and Away: 1.2m (6.1%)
18:25 - Live from Studio Five: 300,000 (1.5%)
19:30 - How Do They Do It?: 600,000 (2.5%)
20:00 - The Gadget Show: 1.4m (5.7%)
21:00 - FlashForward: 2.7m (11.1%)
22:00 - America's Toughest Prisons: 800,000 (5%)

Murderland shed a million on last week it seems, but still very marginally won its slot. FlashForward also down a little it seems.

Nice to see the soaps above 9m.

The viewers that got bored of Murderland seemed to transfer to Life with a much smaller gap between the two this week. Still decent for Murderland though, however I expect Life will take over it next week.

Looking at the adverts for Collision I think it could start strongly with around 6-7m then hold steady at 5-6m with pretty weak/different genre of programmes from the BBC apart from Spooks.

Dispatches seemed to get a boost last night, whilst Tonight & Panorama are very low. But in general another poor night for CH4. Quite worrying that in the main peaktime hours (7-10pm) only two programmes made it past the 2m mark for CH4 last week. Hopefully things will start to improve with Gordan Ramsay and other strong programmes back next week.

FlashForward seems to be holding steady now and I can't see it dipping much below 2.5m for the rest of its run. Also only just noticed Ross Noble has been moved to the 11pm slot and understandably...0.4m is poor in any slot on FIVE, but after a lead in of nearly 3m is incredibly poor.

Corrie comfortably ahead of EE for the first time in a while

Great recovery by Life up from 4.6 last week. I think the Sunday night episode was a good idea, I missed last week (forgot it was on ) and it was a good way of catching up. Cinematography was stunning in last nights episode.

Regarding The X Factor final - ITV would be off their rocker not to do it over Saturday and Sunday. The audience would be EVEN higher on Sunday because

1. it always is very high - no one goes out, work/school the next day
2. people who will have seen the first half of the final the day before will talk about it all day Sunday, it'll be in the news (i.e. Infamous John and Edward finish 3rd in first night of X Factor final), it'll be all over Twitter

ITV would be stupid not to do it for the reasons above, and that voting numbers would SIGNIFICANTLY increase. Not only would they be naturally high on the Sunday show for the final 2, but they would be steady throughout the day with diehard fans voting for their faves.

I think it should go like this:

Saturday 12th 8-10pm
The 3 remaining acts battle for survival, singing their favourite song from the competition, a Christmas song. Also featuring a performance with the final 12, the auditionees "cringe" and performances from Leona Lewis, the Black Eyed Peas and Take That. At the end of the show the line is freezed and the act in third place is announced. They close the show singing again for the last time..

Sunday 13th 8-9.30pm
The final two continue to battle it out, tonight singing a special duet each with James Morrison and Madonna. Guest performances by Jack Johnson, Lady GaGa and Alicia Keys. Then, the final 2 will both get a crack at the winners' song - the result will be announced and the winner will be crowned.

With that schedule I think the Saturday night would get between 14-16 million, with the Final result pulling 18-20m. It would still do well on Saturday but on word-of-mouth and the Sunday night slot would really explode the viewing figures into a realm we haven't seen in such a long time.

If they can get some amazing guests for the Sunday show (Madonna + Lady GaGa would be enough tbh), a good final 2 etc, word of mouth from Saturday's show would spread like wildfire and people would be all over the Sunday result.

DS have reported differently, meaning....

19:30 episode
- 19:30 to 19:55 - 09.91m (41.6%)
- 19:55 to 20:00 - 09.25m (39.8%)
-- Full 1/2 Hour Average: 09.8m (41.3%)

20:30 episode
- 20:30 to 20:55 - 10.09m (41.5%)
- 20:55 to 21:00 - 05.95m (25.9%)
-- Full 1/2 Hour Average: 09.4m (38.9%)

Not sure what the point is of removing the last 5 minutes if it only makes a 100,000 difference.

Dispatches did better than usual but it was one of those food scare mongering ones which they seem to show every so often. The Gadget Show was slightly down due to that but still performing well.

Although FlashForward is down on the first couple of weeks, it is actually very marginally up on last week, with DS reporting that last week it received 2.67m with a 10.9% share.

Doctor Who now located in BBC Press Office's "coming soon" section: http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pro...soon.shtml#p05

All signs point to Week 46 - which is 14th/15th November.

GMTV said today that Donny and Marie will air sometime in November on ITV1.

See: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s...&postcount=121

Apparently its been confirmed as Wednesday 11th November @ 8pm.

I'm surprised it's holding up so well. I'm struggling with this show - the script is weak, the plot seems to be going nowhere, some of the acting is atrocious. It's certainly not the next Lost, that's for sure.

Sorry, missed that.

Stirctly moving to 6.25pm on November 7 to accommodate the Festival of Remembrance, reducing the X Factor overlap to just 15 minutes. Merlin will be moved to 5.40pm. The BBC say it's for one week only.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009...ncing-x-factor

The BBC have behaved like idiots where Strictly is concerned..it should be in the 6.20 slot anyway as that is where it works best!

Thought they would of used the 730pm Wednesday slot to make up the missing episode
could be a good thing for Waterloo rd too

week 46 is what bbc pictures has it down as, I checked this and it is there for week 46.

Big football news. No other tv broadcaster has been found for FA Cup rights yet, so for the first two rounds itv are getting one extra games per round and a third is being broadcast on the FA website. Also there will be a replay on itv 4 each round.

Great news....Paulton Rovers v Norwich City on Saturday Nov 7 ITV 12.45 ko, money in the bank for Rovers.

A few more figures from last night:

BBC1
11.20pm The Apprentice USA 678,700 (9.2%)
12.05am The Apprentice USA 480,000 (11.1%)

BBC3
8.30pm Don’t Get Screwed 309,400 (1.4%)
11.45pm Don’t Get Screwed 266,200 (4.7%)

ITV2
9pm Hell's Kitchen USA 319,000 1.4%
10pm Benidorm 588,000 3.7%

ITV3
5.50pm Heartbeat 264,000 1.5%
9.00pm Live The Dream - As Seen On Screen 178,000 0.8%

ITV4
9.00pm Dollhouse 132,000 0.6%
10.00pm Sanctuary 214,000 1.3%

Since when did ITV have the rights to Dollhouse? And what brainbox decided to put it in the FlashForward slot?

I've heard such good things about that show, I'd have tried to record it if I'd known.

Looks like it has a pre-watershed repeat on Wednesday, which will have to do.

Big sighs of relief for BBC One today, I should think - with Life recovering to very respectable levels. There was a danger it could have wound up tanking to sub-4m after last weeks result. Murderland fell pretty significantly, but ITV will still be quite satisfied with it if it holds above 5 million.

Soaps still fluctuating - this time the ITV soaps did very well, and EastEnders was moderate.

FlashForward is doing good stable business for Five now - and the Gadget Show completes a very strong night for them. Another pretty whiffy monday for Channel 4 though - as ever it seems at the moment. They got much coming up before Christmas, because they seem a bit fragile of late?

Something which caught my eye from the BARB multi-channel top 10's.

Comedy Central:
Two and a Half Men (Mon 2100) - 460,000
Two and a Half Men (Mon 2130) - 493,000

Considering CC has an average 0.6% audience share, they must be delighted with those numbers. Repeats of the show fill 7 of the remaining 8 spots in their weekly top 10.

Since rebranding from Paramount Comedy to Comedy Central in April, the channel has seen a rise in its audience share from 2008.

Jan - 0.4% (0.3%)
Feb - 0.5% (0.3%)
Mar - 0.5% (0.6%)
April - 0.6% (0.5%)
May - 0.6% (0.5%)
June - 0.7% (0.5%)
July - 0.5% (0.5%)
Aug - 0.6% (0.4%)
Sept - 0.6% (0.5%)

The relative lack of success of Two and a Half Men in the UK (versus US and Australia) has been mentioned here before. But it looks like, with plenty of promotion, it is doing well for Comedy Central now. Still not as big as it is abroad, of course.