Whilst it'll still be huge, I can't see it getting the same massive ratings as last year.

And The Door launches on ITV1 Friday 2nd April @ 9pm.
Will it work up against Embarrassing Bodies and Ashes to Ashes?

I wonder how the rugby union dominated BBC One schedule on Saturday will do against ITV1? I know the England game will attract a fair audience at 7.45, but this is normally the time for entertainment and I expect ITV will fight back as rugby is not as big a deal as football.

No. Under 3m.

I can see tonight's Tourettes doing something rare: having a higher rating for the repeat than for the first showing which went up against Britain's Got Talent (12.31m vs. 2.46m)

Last year's primetime rugby game on the final day of Six-Nations was Wales V Ireland. It topped the ratings for the day with 6.05m overnight and 6.59m official. Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway had 6.03m overnight and 6.40m official.

So Sky Sports 2 didn't really come close to beating a very poor ITV1 line up - I say it every week so here we go: ITV need something to stabilise the 8pm slot. At the moment there's nothing to pull people back then.

One Born Every Minute is doing excellently, Richard Hammond launched to ok of not spectacular numbers.


I'd wonder how it'd do at Thursday at 8.30pm against Coronation Street? The important thing is to give it a half decent 8pm lead in, instead of something that'd crumble against Emmerdale. Watchdog held up above 4m in it's disliked hour long format, so cutting it down to 30 minutes and airing that before My Family would work well.


They should do, but I don't think they will.


It won't. It should do, considering the links to I'm A Celebrity... but it's a Saturday night show, not one for Friday's. I don't know what ITV are doing on Friday's, they either dump rubbish there or put programmes in the slot which don't suit it.

Good old BSFI, eh?

Life on Mars s1 - Mondays
Life on Mars s2 - Champions League Tuesdays
Ashes to Ashes s1 - Thursdays
Ashes to Ashes s2 - Fridays

You can't beat a bit of stability...

It might debut OK on Good Friday, but otherwise, it's sunk.


I'm sure it did once air on a Saturday night at about 9.40pm, although I can't remember when. Possibly because of Children in Need or Comic Relief when they decided not to give it a week off. It did rather well there if I recall, and it's one of the reasons I've advocated a move to Saturdays before now.

Really not sure about Thursdays though. It's a weekend show, something to look forward to along with everything else you look forward to at a weekend.

The May 6th edition at 9.30pm will offer a good lead-in to the Beeb's election night coverage. Or, given that election night coverage traditionally starts at 9.55pm, perhaps we will get an extended election special at 9pm with Dimbleby starting c9.50pm?

Does BBC1 air an evening news bulletin on election night? I know they used to air the 9pm News, half an hour of sitcom at 9.25pm and then Election Night, but I can't remember what they've done since 2000 - am I right in thinking the main news doesn't air any more?

Channel 4 have announced that they haven't been left out of the election debates after all. They'll be airing Ask the Chancellors with Darling, Osborne and Cable on March 29th at 8pm. Krishnan Guru-Murthy is hosting. Presumably this one is the least likely to make an impression ratings-wise but good for them for getting in on the act.

Full details here: http://www.channel4.com/news/article...debate/3582162

Also, Jason Manford mentioned on Twitter that he's having meetings with the Beeb about Walk on the Wild Side so I'd assume that means it's likely to return.

I wonder if Doctors could get it's highest ever ratings next week seeing the BBC are now showing adverts for the 10th Aniversary plus after Each episode next week a special Documentary is on 'Decade of Doctors' at 2:15pm?

A quick look at Wiki suggests there have been two Saturday night editions of HIGNFY:

18 November 2000 at 9pm - 6.81m

2 June 2007 when BBC1 aired the England v Brazil friendly on the Friday; it got 5.04m, although it was stuck in the schedule at 10.15pm, after the news.

I'm sure it aired at 9.40pm on a Saturday once and not that many years ago, but I can't be bothered going through the full list.

Ashes to Ashes up against Lost on Sky. I suspect there is a big crossover between viewers of those shows and before anyone mentions Sky+ not all of us can afford it.

That wouldn't seem right but...
8.00 My Family
8.30 Watchdog
might be a possible Thursday schedule. Watchdog up against Corrie like when it was on on Mondays and My Family up against the weaker of ITV's soaps.

But it does look like Wednesday 7.30 is BBC1's only pre-watershed sitcom slot (excet for the Sunday slot that Summer Wine will probably get).


This is series 3 of Ashes.


This was when BBC1 announced they were going to move their news from 9pm to 10pm in a few months time, then ITV announced they were reviving News At Ten (probably to try to stop BBC1 moving their news) so BBC1 had to introduce the Ten O'Clock News immediately and needed to improvise to fill their new 9pm slot. HIGNFY was moved from BBC2 which meant they hadn't planned a break for CIN, so HIGNFY had to move to Saturday that weekend.

How about if I mention the umpteen repeats of Lost on Sky1 and Sky2 across the week?

Fair point but it could have an impact on both show's ratings.

For me, this was the big move that resulted in BBC1 being more competitve with ITV1, and eventually overtaking in primetime. ITV1's stupidity back then with News at Ten has cost it dearly.

At least it can't do any worse than Big Top.


I expect the regular Saturday night viewers will be sitting their waiting for someone to get injured and the paramedics from Holby to turn up.

And secondly - typical footy fan attitude. Rugby has a very solid audience and Saturday nights game will probably outrate most of this months football games that have been on international TV.

If football were a TV show, the way ratings have fallen in recent years it would be heading for the axe.


Actually ITV - a commercial channel - announced the plans first, pretty much forced upon them by OFCOM, but they still had to await OFCOM's approval to return to the 10pm slot.

Meanwhile, the BBC - the channel funded by the licence payer - was able to move it's national news after 30+ years with just two weeks notice and no required approval from an internal or external regulator - even though it was obviously a spoiler tactic against ITV's plans.


Of course though no doubt the BBC moving their news did wonders for their primetime ratings. Considering their 9.30pm dramas used to be scheduled at 50 minutes (which made reselling them abroad and to UKTV easier to pack in the ads), I assume initially they'd have been a few dramas which didn't quite fit the slot (IIRC one night The Weakest Link ran at 8.30pm, with some drama at 9.10pm).

I do think though comedy suffered on BBC1 as a result - some of the stuff they used to show around 9.30pm wasn't really suitable as an extension of primetime in the 9-10pm hour, whilst pushing it back to 10.35pm was too late. And BBC2 comedy has never been the same since BBC1 hijacked their Friday night zone.

The iplayer figure was 1.1 million so this can be up dated:

16.41m [BBC1]
+2.31m [BBC2 repeat]
+1.47m [BBC3 repeat]
+1.10m [BBC iplayer]
TOTAL == 21.29 million!!

But I don't understand where this figure: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/soaps/s2...lled-188m.html comes from?

Also, EastEnders Live: The Aftermath was watched by a total of 11.1 million.

In ratings terms, its the single biggest ratings masterstroke I can remember. As I recall it had minimal impact on the news ratings, but did wonders for the rest of the schedule.

Does anyone have figures for Series 1 of Life of Riley? As I recall, although it was awful, it didn't shed viewers like most were expecting (given how awful it was). That said, it did have an EE lead-in at 8pm on Thursday.

Interesting that Ashes to Ashes has been scheduled for Fridays, Thursdays would have been better but BBC Two, Channel 4 and Five have had success with their 9pm shows breaking the 2m mark.

BBC 1, BBC 3 & BBC iPlayer?

Maybe BBC1 feel sorry for The Bill? To be honest, their scheduling against it hasn't exactly been competitive. Imagine if they'd set up Hustle against it, and Ashes to Ashes? Silent Witness was bad enough for ITV1.

has anyone else read this bit of crazy?

http://www.deadline.com/2010/03/five...-flashforward/


where was there talk about Five saving Flashforward?

Five need all the money they can to save Neighbours & possibly the Bill as well

Some news in regarding regional news on ITV. New executive chairman Archie Norman wants the channel to keep it, according to the New Statesman:


http://www.newstatesman.com/broadcas...s-decision-itv

Will be interesting to see where the money comes from for this if true, considering ITV1 are supposed to be struggling financially.

I dont think this is out of Archies deep love for regional news, its wanting ITV 1 not to have IFCs attached to it, making bidders think twice. Buying the whole Channel 3 Breakfast franchise, and keeping regional news in house, allows him to sell ITV as a solid 24 hours.

Of course Five won't save it, they are more likely to use the money to buy another US import. I believe FlashForward was part of a wider deal with Disney for films and kids shows.