Back to normal for Over The Rainbow. Clearly the Friday 9pm slot was too late to attract a normal sized audience. It'll probably rise even more once it gets a Doctor Who lead-in.

The TV Burp compilation show did well, but pretty low for Push The Button. As expected, a poor rating for Life Stories.

Dubsj, how did Total Wipeout, Who Dares Wins, Casualty, Harry Potter and YBF do?

Not bad for Mr. Hill. 5.7 million for a a repeat.

5.7m for a TV Burp repeat is superb, but the fact that it beat some of the new episodes in the last series surely proves that ITV scheduled some of them badly and should have protected it more. Not great for Push The button, it's found its audience and it's not brilliant. Overall the series so far with one episode left is averaging 5.6m, although that's dragged up by the first episode. Life Stories did badly, but I don't think anyone expected much better for Joan Collins. Geri Halliwell should get it back above 4m next week.

Decent for OTR, and the Friday slot clearly didn't work for it. It's still about 0.5-1m lower than previous 'search' series though.

Gosh, I think 5.6m average for PTB is really good considering what it is. The programme is terrible, it kind of says alot for Ant & Dec that they can present something so completely dated and badly produced and still rate such a high average.

Thanks dubsj. Over the Rainbow did alright it seems. It says a lot for Ant and Dec that a Harry Hill TV Burp 'Best Of' bets Push the Button. Poor for Piers.

dubsj, how did the F1 do? 05:00 to 07:30 and 13:00 to 14:15 on BBC1?

Saturday 27th March 2010
BBC One
10:00 - Saturday Kitchen: 1.82m (24.5%)
12:00 - BBC News: 1.71m (24.0%)
13:00 - Formula 1: The Australian Grand Prix Qualifying: 1.93m (21.0%)
* last year in same slot: 2.53m (27.3%)
16:30 - Final Score: 1.74m (12.2%)
17:10 - BBC News: 3.28m (20.7%)
17:30 - Total Wipeout: 3.26m (18.6%)
18:30 - Over the Rainbow: 5.22m (23.9%)
20:00 - The National Lottery: Who Dares Wins: 6.04m (25.7%)
20:50 - Casualty: 5.91m (25.6%)
21:40 - Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow: 3.56m (16.6%)
22:10 - BBC News: 4.38m (22.4%)
22:30 - Match of the Day: 3.87m (27.3%)

ITV1
15:25 - FILM: Harry Potter & The Chamber Of Secrets: 3.05m (21.0%)
18:20 - ITV News and Weather: 2.93m (15.6%)
18:30 - Funniest Ever You've Been Framed!: 5.18m (24.5%)
19:30 - Harry Hill's The Best Of TV Burp: 5.66m (24.5%)
20:00 - Ant & Dec's Push The Button: 5.05m (21.5%)
21:00 - Piers Morgan's Life Stories: 3.42m (15.2%)
22:00 - FILM: The World Is Not Enough: 1.91m (11.2%)

Five
21:40 - CSI: New York: 2.04m (10.0%)

Thanks to MattJ for the ratings.

ITV's night fell apart straight after the Harry Hill hour and a half. They're lucky he never defected to Sky. BBC did well, although I note a lack of Total Wipeout in the top 10 which suggests it didn't do at all well.

Who Dares Wins is a brilliant programme with such a simple concept and not a bad rating as well.

Shocking that ITV chose to pass on it all those years ago especially as it has the ability to beat their golden boys. I wonder how it would be doing if Ant & Dec presented it, I'd wager far better than Push The Button & even higher than the BBC's Nick Knowles version...

I agree, a really simple concept and really good fun to watch, best family quiz show by a long shot

With Total Wipeout getting a low rating, presumably Harry Potter must have done well?

Either that or people are bored of it now, due to over exposure.

Poor for OTR being beaten and almost beaten by a repeat of TV Burp and an hour long You've Been Framed. YBF! still pulls in the viewers all these years later.

More ratings posted in above post.

I see it was the only show to hit six million last night and was the most watched show on the night. I think only In It to Win It (12Yard's other lottery show) has acheived that status.

Also a story in News of the World which says Strictly will cut back to 12 celebs (so 10 shows) to enable the BBC to spend more on an all-star cast, and they're close to confirming their first big signing - Brooke Kinsella.

Now, I've massive respect for her but I'd hardly call her a big signing. In reality the BBC aren't going to get a better cast than they had last year - all the bigger names either aren't interested, or if they are and are known Stateside they're likely to opt for Dancing with the Stars instead and the bigger pay cheque.

A fortnight ago it had 6.2m. I though that might have been boosted because it followed the final of Let's Dance, but last night's figure confirms it as very much a hit in its own right.

And quite right too as it's great fun to play along at home.

Pity it's likely to be sacrificied against BGT in two weeks' time.

Pretty good bounce for Over the Rainbow to be back up in the comfortable 5m range with a strong share. The live shows should rise too and with a Doctor Who lead-in, the odds for a very healthy 6m plus next week are good. Who Dares Wins has been something of a sleeper hit for BBC One, much like In It To Win It, raking in good audiences when the opposition isn't up to all that much.

Very good for a Harry Hill repeat, but ITV shouldn't have to be relying on that to prop up Ant and Dec's latest project. PTB has stabilised and we'll have to see what ITV and the boys want to do - bring it back, revive takeaway, or try something new?

The results show for Over the Rainbow in a fairly dodge slot though - 6.20pm-7.00pm on Sundays. Why they need an extra 10 minutes is beyond me - indeed the Saturday shows are extended too as in previous years they've rarely topped the hour mark, even in the opening weeks.

No reason either why Doctor Who should be 65 minutes next week rather than the usual 45 - you'd think the BBC would keep that fixed to 45 minutes to make it easier to sell abroad (to run in consistent hour-long slots with ads).


A week on Saturday the Press Red blog says Over the Rainbow will air 7-8.15pm, pushing Doctor Who to 6.15pm, and Total Wipeout before it to 5.15pm. Like the autumn, the BBC over commissioning for Saturday nights.

IMO with comedy moving to Thursdays it's time Casualty was returned to Friday nights and given the 9pm slot (with Euromillions at 9.50pm), freeing up a bit of time on Saturday nights.

Haha, and some people still say BBC are not rating chasers
They are as bad as the commercial channels, when they don't need the ratings the same.

Don't get me wrong, I love the BBC, but I do feel they are forgetting their priorities sometimes and seem to think they are a commercial channel who needs big ratings to be successful when ratings don't mean nearly as much to them as the likes of ITV and C4.

The opposition being the so called golden boys Ant and Dec.Takeaway has looked very tired for the last two series, and their pulling power as a duo cannot make PTB a slot winner against a lottery show fronted by a reupholstered DIY man. A and D need a high class sketch/variety show to define themselves at this stage of their career-being free from any reference to Simon Cowell and the rest of the ITV mafia.

So, when it comes to Saturday night which presumably most people would expect to be entertained, and given the BBC has 3.5 billion of our money-what would you suggest they broadcast instead of Strictly Come Dancing?

I agree with what Score said about Harry Hill's ratings depend more on the competition than anything and it proves that with his figures for last night. An hour and a half of repeats in the middle of primetime delivering 5-6m and beating BBC1's big, heavily promoted, new, expensive entertainment show is excellent really.

However roles are reversed at 8pm with a Nick Knowles fronted BBC1 quiz show, comfortably beating a big entertai nment show fronted by 2 of ITV's biggest stars. Also worth noting PTB is on par with how Take Me Out was doing at the end of its run. I'm doubtful if this will get a recomission now, or whether A&D will revert back to Saturday Night Takeaway.

Also doing some quick maths ITV1 and BBC1 both averaged 3.8m in the 9pm slot last week with, ironically, The Bill taking the biggest 9pm rating of the week with 4.5m. Puts it into perspective that it's not just ITV1 performing poorly in the 9pm slots of late.

That's only for episode 1, the remaining episodes are 45 minutes. Don't forget its effectively the start of the 'new new' series.

Of course Harley Street launched in the same week as Bonekickers, and got a much lower audience, which I was amazed by because surely a medical drama with a load of people off Corrie would be an easier sell than Bonekickers, which was a curious old concept. Of course, Bonekickers ended up dying too, but it emphasises how bad Harley Street was.


Yeah, but The House of Elliot was surely in the grand tradition of BBC drama, exactly what they should have been making, and the only people Will Wyatt blamed was the drama department for being so stupid, and apparently he was told too late or he would have forced them to carry on.

In his book Wyatt slags off the drama department a lot for not wanting to make popular shows and everyone wanting to make films, and in the end they hired Nick Elliott from ITV who only stayed for nine months but sorted things out.

I like Nick Elliott, under him ITV drama was on top form, you had huge hits like Heartbeat and that but also critically acclaimed stuff like Band Of Gold and Cracker at 9pm. I also like him because when it was rumoured Dawn Airey was going to be Director of Programmes at ITV, Elliott said he didn't want her to take over because Channel Five under her was rubbish, and he was right.

ITV can save The Bill if they really want too. I still can't get over that they axed it. Yes, its ratings were poor (except for last Thursday) but it focuses on crime and the viewers all love a good crime drama - the producer and writers just need to be sacked and the show needs to go back to how it was in the early 00s where The Bill got its highest ratings. If they did this, the viewing figures would rise for it again.

As for Ant and Dec, bring back Pokerface! It was so much better a format than Push The Button.

The Bil's already lasted longer than Z Cars and Dixon of Dock Green which were, in their day, the ultimate police show but both of which had become anachronisms by the time they were axed. The Bill is no different really.

The problem with revamping The Bill is that it annoys people who are still watching it because it's not enough like The Bill and doesn't attract any new viewers because it's still The Bill.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be broadcasting it. What I meant was they are trying to get bigger name celebs because they think it will get them more viewers. 6 million is a brilliant number of viewers yet they don't seem to be happy with that.