Perhaps a year of Obama?

Talking of news, bet ratings will drop a bit today with some actual genuine political news making it much less watchable!

..and the Saturday, 16th January schedule has been confirmed for BBC1 (not sure when they were, but I think its only just been confirmed today) :

17:30 - Total Wipeout (r)
18:30 - SYTYCD
19:30 - Lottery
20:20 - SYTYCD Results
20:50 - Casualty
21:40 - Live at the Apollo (r)
22:10 - BBC News

Very poor scheduling for SYTYCD, this week the results are on at 21:45, next week they are on at 20:20?!

I take it the ITV changes wont effect TheBill?

ITV are not changing anything. ITV 'Insider' made a bit of a mistake.

Since when have Saturday nights had a consistent schedule on the BBC?

That schedule is very poor, as SYTYCD is on too early to make room for a Live At The Apollo repeat! Madness.

CBB is all over the place that week too:

Saturday: 9pm as usual
Sunday: 8pm, to make room for Slumdog Secret Millionaire at 9pm, so it'll be starting midway through Dancing on Ice
Monday: Two shows, a 60 minute show at 8pm, against the soaps, and a 35 minute show at 10.20pm, sandwiched around Gordon's Great Escape
Tuesday: 10pm as usual
Wednesday: 10.20pm, to accomode the 80 minute running time of Gordon's Great Escape
Thursday: 10pm as usual
Friday: 9pm and 10.35pm

I know it's been axed already, but that is dreadful scheduling, which shows they really couldn't care less about their current top show.

how hard should I be laughing?

some other updates from Digiguide

Thursday 21st January

BBC 2 9pm new series of Mock the Week (and again on Friday 22nd at 10pm, I assume that is a repeat)

E4 doubles up on The Big Bang Theory & How I Met Your Mother, so its

9pm The Big Bang Theory x 2
10pm How I Met Your Mother x 2

E4 needs to be careful about how quickly it catches up with CBS pace or The Big Bang Theory, not a problem for How I Met Your Mother however.

These so-called rebellions within the Government are becoming more farcical by the minute. But the media continue to lap it up.

I'd take endless footage of the glorious snow any day of the week over this latest non-story at Westminster.

Mind you, Sky managed to combine the two stories quite neatly by managing an outside broadcast outside the Houses of Parliament during blizzard like conditions before the signal was inevitably lost.

That's C4! They did the same last year (with the food season) then wonder why CBB didn't find a consistent audience? Surely much better (and indeed cheaper) to let CBB have the 9pm slot then fill the 10pm slots with films, reruns and one-offs before launching a full primetime schedule and any special season when it's finished.

Talking of C4, notice The Simpsons movie gets a repeat at 7.15pm on Saturday too.

Have you tried GMTV if you find real news too demanding?

Can I put a potential spanner in the works when it comes to working out %share over a period (whether that be primetime or whatever). Up to now I've assumed that, to get the average share over a number of hours, you just add up the %shares for each time period, weight them according to duration and take the average. Looking back over other posts, this seems to be true for other posters as well.

So, for two imaginary hours:

6-7pm BBC1 20% ITV1 10%
7-8pm BBC1 10% ITV1 20%

gives an average share of 15% each.

But...

What if the two hours in question have different total numbers of viewers? As an extreme example, if we imagine that the two hours had a total of 5m and 25m viewers:

5million: 6-7pm BBC1 20% ITV1 10%
25million: 7-8pm BBC1 10% ITV1 20%

Means that, in "viewer hours", that equals:

6-7pm BBC1=1m ITV1=500k
7-8pm BBC1=2.5m ITV1=5m
averages across the two hours: BBC1=1.75m, ITV1=2.75m out of an average total viewers of 15million, means that BBC1=11.7%, ITV1=18.3%.

So, when calculating shares over a time period, have we (and I include myself) been getting the wrong averages?

K

That really is pretty bad scheduling from BBC One.

SYTYCD? really isn't suited to such an early slot and needs a boost by being place later in the evening i.e. 7pm onwards. Also, putting the results show after the Casualty can help 'locks' people into the channel until the results show, thus giving In It To Win It and Casualty a boost.

The early evening is a difficult one to fill, so if I were them, I'd run either a sitcom or Doctor Who repeat. Something like this would be much better:

17:30 My Family (r)
18:00 Total Wipeout (r)
19:00 SYTYCD?
20:00 In It To Win It
20:50 Casualty
21:40 SYTYCD? Results
22:10 News

The common sense (or lack there of) of the BSI really is astounding. Welcome to BBC One 2010!!!

Isnt it as simple as:

Total minutes of BBC1 viewing/ Total tv minutes viewed (so 2m minutes of BBC1 viewing/ 20m of tv viewed = 10% share to BBC1)

The high ratings for the 2009 mini-series boxed Peter Fincham into a corner with regards to a recommission. He's widely rumoured to abhor violence on television, be it real (in boxing) or fictitious (torture porn dramas), and if that's true, presumably he'd be keen to get rid.

When is the other version, called Trial and Retribution coming back? It struggled last year, and I can't see it doing any better this year.

I suspect this kind of stuff form Lynda, might be on its way out from ITV before very long.

Yes, but looking at the way the "primetime" averages have been quoted (regardless of whether that's 7-11 or 6-10:30!), based on the programme shares, the calculation looks as though it hasn't done that.

It may be that, so long as the different number of viewers isn't as extreme as I used above, that it doesn't matter that much! Next time we get a full swathe of numbers, I'll do a spreadsheet!

Edit: hang on George, does your "2m minutes" mean "2 million minutes"? If it does, OK. If it doesn't, what did you mean?

K

No point. Survivors found its level with series one. A week off after the first episode of series two won't make much difference.

I doubt he'll be keen to get rid of them, given the type of ratings Above Suspicion's been getting this week. How many dramas do ITV have that get 6.5m per episode on overnights alone? If anything, I'm expecting an extended run next year.

As for Trial and Retribution, it has been recommissioned, but it isn't due back until later this year/next year I think. It did very well last year, actually, averaging around 5.5m (overnights) on Friday nights, which I'm sure ITV were happy with.

Exactly, it levelled off at about 4.5m last time, IIRC, and therefore there is no reason to expect much more or less this time, with or without a week off.

The primetime shares quoted by DS are calculated properly.

For e.g. they calculate the average number of viewers watching BBC1 between 7-11pm. They calculate the average number of viewers watching total TV between 7-11pm.

Then they divide the first number by the second number and multiply it by hundred. That's how they would get the BBC1 share (and same procedure applied for all other channels).

As it happens George, no. I prefer to get my news from the most reliable, accurate and in-depth source available. So naturally I watch Live From Studio Five every weekday at 1825.

I'd hardly call these latest political murmurings "real news." A lot of journalists that should know better after what happened last June getting overexcited about some empty threats from a couple of bitter egotistical politicians. There's no substance there whatsoever. Snowstorm in a teacup!

The weather is far more newsworthy. I'm sure Live From Studio Five won't let me down later.

Ah! Fair enough. It's obviously got muddled up in my mind with the ratings for a different show.

The 2008 series struggled, barely scraping 4m because it aired against Ashes To Ashes, but they had six episodes on the shelf after that which they ran as a 'new series' in 2009 and it did well, so they've recommissioned it.

OK, cool. I just wondered whether our "manual" calculations were done the same way.

K

Maybe that's what I was thinking of, then!

I'm entitled to get confused at my age. I think only Chris, Kenny and George are older than me on this thread.

I'll let you off then.