Yes somewhere along the line I think the Beeb have missed a trick after Gavin and Stacey. The hour or hour and a half to 11 is ripe for something a bit grander.

Werent BBC1's main and regional news figures brilliant yesterday!

Just went on Broadcast to see if they had any new multichannel ratings within the first few lines of their Xmas articles seeing as the remainder of their articles are subscription only. Instead I was surprised to see their first headline:


As thus, they haven't updated as such since then. Feel sorry for them paying subscription for 52 weeks when they'll only get about 50 weeks of content! A bit of a rip-off, hey...

On a side note, who'd want to write two weeks worth of ratings reports after the Christmas break? Talk about stock piling the amount you need to do....

And what about the industry-recognised 6-10.30pm basis, which doesn't strip out the hour where BBC1 always thrashes ITV1?

If it's so industry-recognised, then why do the main ratings websites not use it?

7pm to 11pm doesn't 'strip out' the hour when BBC thrashes ITV - it includes 10pm to 11pm, doesn't it? In fact, if you do it from 6pm to 10.30pm, chances are that ITV's share would actually be higher than what it is for 7-11.

And also, if 6-1030 was so industry recognised, may I ask why the Beeb never used it here? http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pre...9/vision.shtml

I meant the 6-7pm hour, where BBC1 airs two of its most popular programmes 5 days a week and soundly beats ITV1; it also does quite well there at weekends.

I agree with some of the above sentiments regarding New Years Day. Gavin and Stacey has proven its ratings sceptics wrong and I think fully deserves that 9pm NYD slot and could pull 8m or so in it. However, scheduling QI after it seems a bit limp and a waste of a very good slot.

And yeah, I didn't notice at first but the news was amazingly high again yesterday. There seems to be nothing to get people flooding to the news like the slightest suggestion of snow...

In faireness to Robbie, it seems that BBC viewers like to go to bed early. 8.30pm apparently is bedtime now

The 7-11 definition of peaktime is used to show the peak hours for commerical channels, therefore it is designed to show ITV's best hours and negatively impacts on the BBC.

It's as if they got to 1st December and went "Oh shit, Jonathan Creek won't be ready until Easter!".

Wouldn't put anything past the BSI...

How though? 10pm to 11pm is definitely not one of "ITV's best hours"- on most nights its primetime ends there, whereas the BBC have the News and then Question Time/Graham Norton/Jonathan Ross etc..

ITV viewers seem to go to bed at 9pm as none of them watch anything on the channel after the soaps. That or the 9pm offerings are just not very appealing.

I think it dates to when the news was at 11pm. Also for ad sales up to 11pm is considered peak

Firstly missing out the the 6-7 hour is a big advantage to ITV as it is always a massive victory for the BBC. Secondly the gap between the two channels between 10:30 and 11 is usually quite small even though BBC usually edge it. Then you are left with 7-10 where often ITV will win purely because it has 90 minutes of soaps.

God, I thought this petty prime-time debate had ended a week ago!

I think Family Primetime is : 06:00 to 08:30 and Adult Primetime is 08:00 to 11:30 judging by viewing patterns.

I don't suppose the idea that it may be a typo has been considered? (the frequent use of "winkies" seems to mean that it has!) Has anyone emailed the Beeb to see if that was intentional?

Anyway, Ofcom and C4 use 6-1030 as "peak". As previously noted (I can't see the relevant post ATM), there were two months earlier in the year where, by the ITV definition of peak, ITV1 won, but by the "6-1030" definition, BBC1 won. Presumably, trading one hour of early BBC dominance for half an hour of late BBC dominance must be advantageous to ITV1?

Maybe we should have a 24-month total as a decider! Add the 12 months of 7-11 to the 12 months of 6-1030 and divide by two!!!


K

I fail to see the relevance of primetime to the BBC anyway. The concept of primetime developed in the US as a result of the FCC limiting the number of networked hours the big 3 could run versus local affiliate programmed content - hence primetime being 8-11 six nights per week; 7-11 on Sundays. Other definitions of primetime relate to ad sales: networks offering advertisers a certain number of guaranteed viewers between certain hours - the definition of primetime there being a matter for the stations and the ad sales houses. Quite what any of this has to do with the BBC escapes me!

Well this exactly the point. If it has no relevance to the BBC then why is it always applied to the BBC and always compared to ITV?

i have absolutely no idea. up until about 10-15 years ago ratings weren't the BBCs number one priority but that seemed to change sometime in the 1990's. The BBC used to be more concerned about making good programmes. If it rated well so much the better but it wasnt the be all & end all it seems to be now for BBC1 in particular.

Regarding the whole 'peak time' debate. The only reason why 'media' websites use the 7pm - 11pm definition for peak time is because their supplier (i.e. Attentional) use it. I posted a while back on another forum about this issue:

Looking at a random day, here Thursday 29th October,this is how the hours of 5pm - 12am broke down:

5.00pm - 14.5m
6.00pm - 19.2m
7.00pm - 21.0m
8.00pm - 22.9m
9.00pm - 22.7m
10.00pm - 17.8m
11.00pm - 10.7m

If we condsider the definition of prime time is such that it is when the most viewers are watching TV, it could be argued primetime would run from either 6pm to 11pm or 7pm to 10pm. Is 7.00pm to 11.00pm really prime time? - the 10pm hour has less people watching than the 6pm hour...

Looking at Saturday (31st October):
5.00pm - 15.8m
6.00pm - 19.1m
7.00pm - 22.2m
8.00pm - 24.7m
9.00pm - 23.3m
10.00pm - 18.9m
11.00pm - 12.4m

Again its clear if primetime is considered the time when we have the most viewers watching, it should be either 6pm - 11pm or 7pm - 10pm.

digital spy is the only one who uses it and it ds isnt an main ratings website.
Attentional who supply ds with their ratings, took over the ratings contract at broadcast magazine last year.
Broadcast doesnt recognise their definition of primetime[7-11] and doesnt publish those stats.
Previously broadcast used 6 to 10.30.

Mediaguardian,barb, bbc, channel4, five,bskyb, virgin media and bbc worldwide all measure it at 6-10.30.

You are completely correct on this point. If ratings are not that relevant to the BBC why are people always quoting, comparing and complaining about them.

The truth is all anti BBC individuals/corperations/politicians use the ratings to beat the BBC around the head - this has caused the reaction in the BBC that we now have. It would be very easy to stop this if the government gave the BBC a long term charter and license fee settlement and made it perfectly clear that quality rather than ratings were the main aim.

That would seem to end the debate though I dont see anything wrong with ITV pointing out how many watch them between 7 and 10.00. However if the official line is 6 to 10.30 then that should be the recognised standard.

Sorry but where in that article does it say that 6-8.30 is their actual definition of primetime.for the BBC.It basically just says in peaktime from 6-8.30 their are up.

Its all spin you would hardly expect them to release an press prelease saying how wonderful it is to be down year on year between 6-10.30.

6-10.30 has always been the standard, after the inital success of Itv moving news at ten they changed their definition because measuring from 7-11 gave them an higher % share than 6-10.30,

At this time BBC had just began to overtake them with their regional news shows and in the 10-11 slot ITV were very strong Frank skinners chatshow 7m+,morse and touch of frost repeats,hollywood films had 8m+ and the orginal Tonight with Trevor Mcdonald on wednesdays had 6m+ for 60 mins in the 10 o clock hour.
Itv to this day is still the only broadcaster to measure it this way as it benefits them to leave out the beebs strongest hour.Even the guardians and other newspapers xmas day reports measured primetime as 6-10.30.
As rtz has pointed out previously it makes an big difference what definition you use when looking at particular months.

I can also tell u that neither itv or bbc really care what definition is used the only people that care seem to be ITV/bbc fanboys/haters