Great for Victoria Wood and BBC2. Given the stupid decision to air Crimewatch in Christmas week, I think BBC2 became BBC1 for many viewers last night.

I haven't seen a single trailer for Midlife Christmas yet, which is odd given it's one of BBC1's biggest shows of this year and could get 10m properly promoted, so maybe last night was the only push the Beeb are going to give it?

Noteable figures for The One Show, Nigella repeat and Question of Sport. Perhaps QoS could get a regular Monday 8.30 slot instead of Friday, with Panorama dumped elsewhere? Cookery shows, despite their cheap "filler" nature, are doing very well against ITV's soaps, so I think we'll be seeing more of them.

The Sun Military Awards did OK, solid if unspectacular. I'm glad they didn't get big figures because I find something distasteful in seeing The Sun and ITV plc making money out of the efforts of Our Boys and Girls, some of whom are paying with their lives.


10% of its original 25/12/01 audience.

A great figure, but a stupid decision by the BSI to waste a re-run of the final trilogy, iffy though it was, in a lunchtime slot. Yesterday's ep will stand as the only (non-football) show in this decade to get a 20m audience, so it's odd to schedule a repeat of it (on probably only its 3rd or 4th showing in 9 years?) on a weekday afternoon. Unlike a few years ago, BBC1 has been an OFAH-free zone for ages now. A good idea to repeat these little-shown recent episodes, but why the stupid slot? It looks like the Beeb scheduled backwards from 6pm and found themselves with a 75 min slot Mon-Weds this week and thought "I know, we'll bung the last 3 OFAHs in there".

I bet these would have done even better in a late afternoon slot, where I think they would have been appreciated.

If it was on the BBC they would ensure that in the spirit of inclusiveness the Taliban were eligible too.

As we rarely get figures for that time in the morning I don't really know what we should expect as we have little to compare against. From that figure though we can see around 6m watching around 11am in the morning - a bit lower than I expected really, and shows the usual BBC1/ITV1 figures perform really well then.


Completely disagree - the figures on BBC1 and BBC2 clearly suffer from both channels showing similar programmes, something they should absolutely not be doing. If kids shows had continues I'm sure they'd have got the kind of figure BBC2 had yesterday, with BBC2 getting the kind of figure BBC1 had.

Peak share (7-11pm) after 21 days of December is BBC1 21,9%; ITV1 25.7%. BBC1 needs to win by +8% every night from 22nd to 31st to win the month.

Another batch of ratings courtesy of DS and MG:

Channel 4
22:00 - Ugly Betty: 660,000 (3.2%)
* last week: 623,000 (3.6%)
* series opener: 1.83m (10.5%)
* series average: 998,000 (5.8%)
* +1: 130,000

ITV2
21:00 - FILM: Gremlins: 729,000

BBC Three
22:00 - EastEnders: 823,000 (3.9%)

E4
22:00 - FILM: The Family Stone: 126,000

Sky1
22:00 - Ten Minute Tales: 87,000 (0.4%)

Good rating for Gremlins and the EastEnders repeat, very poor for Sky1's TMT.

Incorrect, EastEnders also rated 20 million plus viewers this decade for the episode in 2001 where viewers found out who shot Phil. The 40 minute episde shown on 5th April 2001 was watched on first showing by 20.05 million viewers.

Here is the list - http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/tabl...ion-television


I hope EastEnders does rate well on Christmas Day as the storyline is quite strong, much stronger then last Christmas Day's storyline. When both episode pulled in 11 million plus viewers. But whether is gets 12 million is another thing, you got to remember in the last four years (about 850 episodes since end of 2005), just one episode has achieved it - the second episode on Christmas Day 2007.

Robbie was probably talking about overnight figures where it had ~17/18m.

MORE ITV M/C RATINGS:

ITV2 viewing figures

Gremlins had an audience of 729,000 viewers and a 3.6% share

Prior to this, a repeat of ITV1's Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Christmas Special attracted 238,000 viewers / 1.0% share

ITV3 viewing figures

Lewis had an audience of 760,000 viewers and a 3.6% share

The Darling Buds of May Christmas at the Larkin household had 343,000 viewers and a 1.5% share.

ITV4 viewing figures

Dollhouse attracted an audience of 137,000 viewers and a 0.6% share while the new episode of Sanctuary had an audience of 236,000 viewers / 1.2% share

Alright, he is right then. This epsiode of EastEnders did get an huge shift, which is unusually for EastEnders.

Im not sure why people are saying Eastenders has started its Christmas surge. The equivalent episode of EE on this monday last year got 9.1m.

Great rating for EE for what was a great episode.

And last night was 9.7m was it not? 1 million up on last Monday's figure...

Thats interesting. The storyline does seem to be getting some more people tuning in, then. Not sure how Christmas Day will do in relation to last year. On one hand, they've a bigger storyline and only Mr and Mrs (not DOI) as competition. On the other, I don't know whether the hour long length might hit it a little - and it won't have the same sort of 14m+ bequeathed audience the last two Christmas Day episodes have had (following DW and W&G).

Crimewatch predictably dull and the Military Awards didn't seem to appeal particularly widely either. BBC Two benefitted big time from the poor opposition at 9pm with the Victoria Wood thing. Demonstrates the sort of audience available to her - though its interesting that Robbie says it hasn't been promoted especially well. I disagree with his suggestions is could be worth 10m (not on Christmas Eve, anyway), but I don't think 8m or over is out of the question.

Its a brillant figure but the point im making is that some people are talking like it always improves in Christmas week but usually only improves on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years.

This week last year before Christmas Day:

MONDAY 22/12/08: 20.00- EastEnders: 9.1m (38.2%)
TUESDAY 23/12/08: 19:30- Eastenders: 6.1m (Clash with Emmerdale)
WEDNESDAY 24/12/08: 20.00- EastEnders: 8.4m (36.3%)

Arguably, the Tuesday knocked EastEnders' momentum right off. I can see tonight's still being 9m+ - worth noting last week went as follows:

Monday - 8.72m (36.6%)
Tuesday - 8.39m (39.8%)
Thursday - 8.05m (37.6%)
Friday - 8.42m (37%)

I think tonight will be near to or over 9m, and Thursday should do over 9m probably.

FYI the industry has always measured peak time from 6-10.30pm, its the standard.Only ITV changed their definition when their regional news began to haemorrhage viewers an few years ago.

Still only one non soap show breaking 5m on ITV1 since the x factor finale night. Really expected better ratings for the military awards with all the promotion news corporation gave it.

Ofcom still refer to ITV's peak requirements as


http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/psb_revie...b09/psbrpt.pdf


K

I wish Night of Heroes had done better than that. A show for remembering Our Boys and Girls deserved it. Admittedly it was very tabloidy at times, and a lot of work can go into it so next year is a bit more respecful than having ruddy Bruce Forsyth and Mylene Klass dishing out awards.

Victoria Wood night did fantastically for BBC2. Crimewatch let down BBC1 ever so slightly after a brilliant night for the channel - EastEnders over a 1m up on Coronation Street! If that doesn't show that the latter is in trouble I don't know what does. In contrast, Emmerdale seems to be doing pretty well.

As someone else said, the less said about Five's night the better.

For ad sales 6-11pm is peak, but 6-7pm week nights is discounted because of the Ofcom news requirement being unattractive to advertisers. The "haemorrhage of viewers" was laregly due to Ch4 and five deploying The Simpsons & teenage soaps in the 6-7pm hour btw, which kind of reemphasises the point about the 6-7pm newshour being dead weight for ITV from a profitability/ sustainability perspective.

I'm not sure how to describe it, but I just felt it was a little patronising and all those celebrities turning up for a free night out - I didn't think much of it.

I agree - it would've been better if the audience was full of military people, their families, and maybe some of the politicians who decided it was a good idea to send them to their deaths. Not full of some desperate celebrities after a free meal ticket.

Yeah, it was a nice idea and a nice show, but it was ruined somewhat by practically the entire auditorium being full of celebrities. Yes, a few major stars to honour the soldiers is fine and a good idea but when people like Kate Silverton and Michael Underwood are there it devalues it. ITV should bring it back next year (the ratings were decent enough for them to give it another go) but they need to invite far less celebrities, and like Fudd says, invite more military people and their families.

I've put a tenna on DW topping Christms Day, I fully expect EE to anchor up somewhere around 13m though.

Any figures for the period that most broadcasters regard as "peak time" rather than the one which suits ITV best?


No, I just forgot that EE was also a non-football member of the "Noughties 20m+ Club".

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