I'll take your word for it but they must have been crazy to expect that. Even Soapstar Superstar struggled to get those figures with a more obvious cast & music range

Didnt dancing on ice launch to 9M, but i suppose that format may have been familar to the audience already

Did they? IIRC (and I probably don't) msot people on this thread were predicting a flop.

Maybe if they'd put the programme on on Saturday against SYTYCD, they'd have got it.

Of course, they probably came up with these figures before they found out the BBC were putting Silent Witness on the other side.

Figures for comparison?

8 million is astonishing. IMO the show ticks few boxes. It doesnt have Simon Cowell and therefore has no credibility , it doesnt attract youngsters because they would not go within a mile of Opera and it isnt going to attract Opera buffs because its too lightweight. And it had tough opposition in Silent Witness. If it did have any chance the Beeb have done their bit to bury it along with its rather peculiar mixed theme.

Nope, they were expecting that even with SW and celeb BB


Popstar to operastar actually cost around 2 and half mill to make for 6 episodes. Doi[ costs about 6.5m -7m for 12 weeks] gets double the viewers and the cost also includes a seperate result show.pto also has zero repeat value.

Popstar to operstar has a bigger budget than the beebs sytcd.So you think you can dance has the same budget as Graham Nortons eurovision show from last year.Even though that was only 5 weeks long and sytcyd lasted 7weeks.

I doubt they were expecting 8m viewers, 6m still seems to be the benchmark for a good performance so I'd say they were hoping to be closer to this than 3m.

Since when was BBC 1 summer entertainment budget smaller than ITVs

6m is what I heard as well

Opera and ITV aren't a good mix and this would have fared better on the BBC where the audience is more responsive to this type of music and where ratings concerns aren't such a big deal.
As for Hell's Kitchen, I think it was reaching the end of its reality shelf life and ratings were down to 3 million at times. However, ITV could sit back and say it's made a lot of money for them in American rights even if the repeat and DVD potential is non existent.

Having just checked, the respective budgets (as of June 2009) are:

BBC1 - £1.1 billion
ITV1 - £750 million
C4 - ~£525 million (I think this number is for all channels)
C5 - ~£165 million

Source: Media Guardian (1, 2, 3)

So BBC1's budget is bigger.
Last edited by D.M.N. : 14-02-2010 at 15:51

Of course, BBC One does a lot more than ITV with its bigger budget: current affairs, religion, documentaries, children's programmes, the regions.

It was costly but as costly as an hour of popstar to operastar.
The restraunt used in the last series was about half the size of the original one used in series one.

Why ofcom persist in making them have an arts quota is beyond me

Saturday 13rd February Overnights
BBC One
18:45- Total Wipeout: 5.03m (22.4%)
19:45- So You Think You Can Dance? Final: 5.31m (22.1%)
21:25- Casualty: 6.19m (26.6%)

ITV1
19:30- Harry Hill's TV Burp: 4.74m (20.5%)
21:00- All Star Mr & Mrs: 4.64m (19.2%)

Thanks to MattJ

Those were the Top 5 programmes yesterday. Looks like ITV1's figures were hit, with TV Burp down by around 2m compared to the previous week. I thought that would happen due to the poor football post-match lead in. No word on what Take Me Out got exactly, but it's at least half a million down from last week.

Total Wipeout did well for a repeat, and Casualty posted a good figure (should timeshift to 7m+). Alright for the So You Think You Can Dance final.

I think total wipeout and tv burp probably share a similar audience

Sorry guys, I was sure BBC1's budget was 600 and something million.

ITV hit by the football a lot it seems, very poor figure for TV Burp... all of its line-up down quite considerably. BBC1 did well it seems, winning all of primetime, even if SYTYCD's figure isn't superb.

TV Burp should have a good repeat figure today then.

It is. The something being 500.

Not really suprising for TV Burp, as it never does well after football, and as it shares a large audience with Wipeout it rarely does well starting halfway through that either, so with those two factors combined last night, the ratings aren't too surprising.

Total Wipeout actually got more last night than the 3.8m it got when it was originally shown last summer. Not really surprising as because all the episodes are the same nobody seems able to tell the difference between new episodes and repeats. Okay for So You Think You Can Dance, but I thought it would be closer to 6m. It's not often that he final of one of these shows is below the overall series average (5.4m in this case) so the BBC won't be too happy.

Your fine



TW is quite a ratings banker

Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony figures anyone?

So You Think You Can Dance has bombed to me, for a Final, that's below what SCD would be getting. They may as well put SCD on twice a year like ABC.

SYTYCD should be given another series...it was beginnign to ind its feet but went away too quick....if the ratings are still crap next year axe it

So the BBC should learn to treat it better

I know this is a few days late, but it's probably worth pointing out that Glee had 684,000 on the same night in the 9pm hour. Other E4 shows with 0.4m or more are The Cleveland Show, Skins, The Big Bang Theory and Shameless First Look.

At a guess, ~1m.


Err, it wouldn't get SCD's figures just like that. OK, it should have been higher than 5.3m, but if your expecting over 10m for a show in its first year, then you're going crazy.