The schedules have already been confirmed and signed off for December 6th with Small Island @ 9pm.

It seems TV's Eamonn Holmes is quite unwell at the moment. Missed every edition of Sky News Sunrise he was due to present this week, throwing into doubt his two Friday gigs: "This Morning" with wife Ruth, and also Belfast's "Children in Need" coverage.

Jon Culshaw could always stand in?

No, Small Island is confirmed for 9pm. Bad scheduling there, imo, they shoud have moved it to 8.30pm.

It's probably not suitable for pre-watershed then. As I say, this could work out well because ITV1 viewers are notoriously slow with the remote, so by 9pm, those who haven't already switched for Top Gear might fancy giving BBC1's big new drama a go.

I really don't see big ratings for Batman Begins on ITV1, no matter what precedes it.

I'd say Batman Begins is probably on for 5-6m (The Dark Knight brought it a lot of publicity), but i doubt there is much of a crossover between the audiences for Small Island and Batman. The big crossover really is between Batman and Top Gear, and it'll be interesting to see how that one goes, especially as Top Gear has now shown it can dip when faced with competition.

Probably be the week after to coincide with Easter weekend.

Personally I think Lets Dance would be better off stripped across a single week, perhaps Mon-Thu in the run up to Sport Relief on the Friday.

Still think they were pretty stupid to move Sport Relief from June considering the nature of many of the fundraising events rely on half decent weather.

Ah, but Top Gear didn't dip, did it?

Of course not, it got exactly the same as it got for the last series, but 'Tits Out' did terribly and was millions below what it should have got. Should have at least matched X Factor's 14.8m (the rating it gets every week).

I don't think it will match the first series average of 7.7m, which was helped by the "Robert Webb" effect after his hilarious performance. Oddly the final rated lower than the previous week's show. All other "talent" shows saw their ratings in the first season peak for the final. So we'll see when the ratings come in next year if the format can hold its own...

double post

And although the same charity, I don't think they'll get as good a line up for Sport Relief as they would for Comic Relief.

I do think they were very lucky with Robert Webb. As a format I don't think it has much longevity but we'll see.

Are you being sarcastic ? For sure Let's Dance was a hit. But Your Country Needs You averaged 4.97m in the overnights, which is okay but by no means a hit. I think all the other Andrew Lloyd Webber shows rated better and some of those were at a disadvantage by airing in the summer months.

Also there's no guarantee that So You Think You Can Dance will be a success over here. I was looking at the American ratings and it does well with younger viewers, but the overall viewership wasn't that great at all (around 6-8m). I hope it does turn out to be a success as the BBC's light entertainment output at the moment is quite poor in comparison to what ITV has to offer.

Clearly...

Apart from SCD has the BBC had a huge entertainment hit this decade?

The BBC is at its best with drama,news,factual and sport.ITV does entertainment best, other than that ITV does not offer much else.

ITV may have huge hits with BGT and XF, however its a channel with nothing but soaps, crime dramas and reality tv.ITV really should be looking in to offering more for the viewers, if Simon Cowell ever left ITV would be in a lot of trouble.

5-6m seems a realistic prediction but I think it go slightly lower given that it's been out four years. It's a good film but I imagine most people will watch Top Gear first and switch to Batman because the first hour isn't that interesting.

Talking of films, who has the terrestrial rights to Twilight and New Moon because it's not owned by any of the big studios, if I had to hazard a guess I would say Channel 4 or The BBC.

I have to say BBC One are making a mistake trying to cram in SYTYCD? and Let's Dance before Sport Relief. As has been mentioned eariler, BBC One need to make a big deal out of SYTYCD? if it's going to be a success and seven episodes just isn't going to cut the mustard. If they had it on right up until the Six Nations weekend, then they would have 11 weeks.

I'm intrigued at the idea of running Let's Dance... stripped over a week, but is it a strong enough brand for that. Also, Eastenders does get in the way slightly. I suppose they could have went.

Monday - Wednesday
8:00pm Let's Dance
9:30pm Eastenders

Thursday
8:00pm Eastenders
9:00pm The Apprentice Does Sport Relief

I suppose it would meant pushing Eastenders pretty late, but you couldn't really have Let's Dance starting at 8:30pm as you'd miss the family audience.

The only other option would be Sundays, but the problem there would be dancing shows on both Saturday and Sunday, with Dancing on Ice on ITV.

So, in conclusion, there isn't really that much that can be done.

Also, the casting has been announced for BBC One's new drama, The Silence, with a deaf actress in the lead role:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pre.../silence.shtml

He'd only eat Pudsey.


The week before didn't have a Six Nations lead in by any chance? Not sure when the final weekend was...


I guess you mean in documentaries and family dramas - Primeval is back which is a good thing but they need to find anothe couple if possible. As for documentaries - they've taken away their best slot on Thursday nights for The Bill.

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Good for I'm A Celebrity if a bit down. The next three days will be very interesting, though Spooks did slip last week.

Around the World was steady if not spectacularly. Horizon did well, as did CSI. Channel 4 are having a complete nightmare - they're still going to be reliant on the programme they've axed at this rate for revenue!

I think Spooks will have an increase as will IAC. There wasn't much aside from Making of Modern Britain on BBC Two, The Family on Channel 4 and Swordfish on Five.

I'll be interested to know how the France v Ireland football match did on Sky - I wonder if that could hit Spooks and I'm A Celebrity, albeit slightly.

Sky News, This Morning and Children in Need in Belfast in one day??

That would be impressive - to get from This Morning at 12.30pm to Belfast in time to rehearse for a marathon live show from 7pm. Especially considering the 'nations' opt out of so much of Children in Need now.

Another technical fault on IAC. It's been a bit shoddy so far this year.

It has now become the Katie Price show so at least her team will be able to brag that her show is rating higher than Peter Andre's did on ITV2. Since there was that big thing about his latest ITV2 show doing better than her one off thing had before that.

As regards LE, if i can be screwed up & made flop, BBC1 will try its best!

Wednesday 18th November Overnights
BBC One
18:00- BBC News at Six: 4.6m (24.0%)
18:30- Regional News and Weather: 5.7m (27.7%)
18:55- Queen's Speech Broadcast: 3.9m (19.3%)
19:00- The One Show: 4.3m (20.6%)
19:30- Jimmy's Food Factory: 4.7m (21.8%)
20:00- Waterloo Road: 4.4m (18.8%)
21:00- Spooks: 4.6m (18.2%)
22:00- BBC News at Ten: 4.3m (20.5%)

BBC Two
18:00- Eggheads: 2.2m (11.6%)
18:30- Strictly Come Dancing - It Takes Two: 2.6m (12.9%)
19:00- The Fastest Steam Car in the World: 1.5m (7.1%)
19:30- Railway Walks: 1.6m (7.4%)
20:00- Top Gear: 2.2m (9.1%)
21:00- Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain: 2.5m (9.7%)
22:00- Never Mind the Buzzcocks: 1.7m (8.0%)

ITV1
18:30- ITV News & Weather: 3.5m (17.2%)
18:55- Queen's Speech Broadcast by the Labour Party: 4.3m (21.0%)
19:00- Emmerdale: 6.7m (31.6%)
19:30- Celebrating The Carpenters: 5.7m (25.4%)
20:30- I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!: 8.0m (32.0%)
22:00- ITV News at Ten & Weather: 3.3m (16.3%)

Channel 4
18:30- Hollyoaks: 1.5m (7.5%)
19:00- Channel 4 News: 0.8m (3.8%)
19:55- Rory Peck Awards 2009: 0.7m (3.4%)
20:00- Country House Rescue: 1.8m (7.5%) , +1: 41,000 (0.2%)
21:00- The Family: 1.1m (4.5%) , +1: 286,200 (1.7%)
22:00- True Blood: 1.1m (6.3%)

Five
18:00- Home and Away: 1.1m (6.0%)
18:30- Live From Studio Five: 0.3m (1.4%)
19:30- Highland Emergency: 0.6m (2.6%)
20:00- Britain's Best Brain: 0.5m (2.2%)
21:00- Swordfish: 0.9m (4.3%)

E4 [inc. +1]
19:30- How I Met Your Mother: 440k

Film4 [inc. +1]
18:45- Batman and Robin: 200k
21:00- Little Nicky: 220k

More4 [inc. +1]
22:00- Gerry's Big Decision: 50k

All Day Shares
ITV1: 21.3%
BBC One: 18.9%
BBC Two: 8.0%
Channel 4 [inc. +1]: 7.3%
Five: 4.1%
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Celebrating the Carpenters did much better than I expected on ITV1 . I saw a bit of it and the singers were butchering the Carpenters songs, it was awful! But this was meant to be a pilot according to Broadcast which would be turned into a series if it rated well. So I expect we'll see more Celebrating... shows in the future.

I'm a Celebrity did quite well around the 8m mark despite the earlier start. BBC Two didn't seem too affected, but The Family on C4 really dipped. Not a good night for BBC1 either, with WR and Spooks suffering against ITV's programmes. As usual, poor Wednesday night for Five.

Numbers down for everything, I wonder if the Ireland v France World Cup qualifier game would have had any bearing? I would imagine most of Northern Ireland would have tuned in to that on RTE, and that ran from 8 until after 10:30 with extra time, just a thought? Not sure how much NI impacts on ratings, pop is about 1m only I think.

Carpenters and IACGMOOH did well, Waterloo Road and Spooks well down