Where did Jay Hunt lose BBC One's comedy output? Did it fall down the back of the sofa?

Wheres outnumbered

Even the Sunday lunchtime sitcom repeats have gone, to be replaced with Bargain Hunt and Cash in the Celebrity Attic.

And, for good measure, both of those antiques/tat shows are on Saturday afternoon too.

Ive just seen that now, are the entire BBC SPORT team having an extended holiday in vancover or something.

We're nearing the end of the financial year. Clearly BBC1 have ran out of money.

I think ITV have had a very subdued start to the year. It hasn't been as awful as 2008 but nowhere near as good as 2009.

Law and Order has done fine on Mondays but it's not getting the ratings that the "thrillers" were getting last year. Tuesdays are doing terribly but that's nothing new! Thursdays are very quiet with The Bill permanently at 9pm. While Popstar to Operastar hasn't been a total bomb, it didn't do well either. They've not had much on Saturdays and Sundays have slipped back a bit from last year.

The highlights so far have only really been the strong return of Above Suspicion and the revamped NTA format. However, Married Single, Other could be a big success for them (if it holds over 5m).

They could be doing the BBC thing of instead paying one person $100.000 dollars to do everything, they get four people and pay them $25.000 dollars each and let them holiday in Vancouver for the rest of the time.

I don't like the BBC's channel budgets. The only channel that should have a channel budget is BBC Three, instead it should be the departments that should have budgets.

It could be an amazing rating, remember in 2012 the pre Olympic hype in the media will be relentless. Iam not sure what the rating and share was for the Sydney Olympic opening ceremony was on Australian tv, but that would be a good indication of what we can expect here. I think we could be talking around 18 million.

If the budgets were performance based then the BBC entertainment department should get £00.



BBC two are airing 'lambing live' acoss the week Sunday march 7th to Thursday 11th.I think it could be a decent sized hit with the countryfile/springwatch demographic

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pro...ing_live.shtml

I know a few that are now starting to watch the Scottish soap River City on BBC1 Scotland on Tusedays at 8pm. I have once in a while watched the repeat of it on a Sunday when I have got nothing better to do. Any one know how River City is doing in the Rating in Scotland and whats the rating like if STVs The Hour at 5pm Weekdays dose anyone know.

Darren

Don't even joke about the latter, though at least if it moved there and she got 2.5m viewers it would be axed!

As for Idol - problem is with it airing on Tuesdays in the States they would need a weeks delay, so I'm not sure they'd get away with that.


That sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.


If it's an "entertainment slot", why on earth have they given it too Michael Winner. Surely even ITV know the reason Come Dine with Me is successful is because Michael Winner is nowhere near it.


Not quite sure if ITV have any rights to Underbelly though through STV, or whether it's completely STV's call. I think FX showed the series first anyway, so I imagine STV did a deal with them.


Why, why, why. This was the most promising new reality show from ITV in ages, but not only have they ruined it by making it yet another celebrity reality show, they're obviously scrapping the barrel even further too.

With Big Brother going ITV might have been wise to look beyond the first series and see that with regular normal folk if the first series went well they could be fulfilling that BB fix in the years ahead.


Re: BBC Sport. Awful schedule for the week after the Olympics - no live sport at all across the weekend. Surely they could have packaged something together from the Olympics, or perhaps given say the Figure Skating Gala an airing, considering they're not airing it on BBC2 or Freeview.


And finally, some game show news. Divided is back on ITV1 in April, presumably after Easter, whilst The Cube has now been greenlit for a US series by CBS - though NBC's blatant rip-off Minute to Win It will get to air first, beginning March 14th.

18-20m sounds realistic for the opening ceremony, for other events it is a bit harder to predict but I think Athens gives an idea of what to expect if Britain wins gold.

The Winter Olympics are doing well for BBC Two but the time differences mean that it's difficult to attract high ratings although the 8-9pm ones have done over 3m, has the Winter Olympics ever aired on BBC One or is a BBC Two exclusive?

The reason for that is that there is no live sport that weekend. Be glad though, because live Formula 1 is back the weekend after.

BSI - Cars, Cops and Criminals
- Episode 1: Wednesday, 10th February
- Episode 2: Monday, 15th February
- Episode 3: Thursday, 11th March



On the Monday of that week is a New Tricks repeat... and a New Tricks repeat is why it couldn't air on Monday 22nd. Why didn't they do:

- Episode 1: Wednesday, 10th February
- Episode 2: Monday, 15th February
- Episode 3: Monday, 22nd February
- Episode 4: Monday, 8th March*

* no episode previous week to Five Days.

Do BBC schedulers not follow logic?
Last edited by D.M.N. : 24-02-2010 at 21:06

I know we'll never agree on this, but this is why Grandstand was dropped. Because what you've suggested is exactly what they would have been reduced to. Cobbling together some non-live stuff and sporadic extras, just because its a Saturday afternoon and theres a schedule to fill.

If there's no sports (to which BBC possess the rights) that can be covered live on a Saturday afternoon, then I don't see why there should be any BBC Sport programming then. Fit the broadcast schedule around the sport schedule - not the other way round.

I'm just wondering who are scraping the barrel more there...CBS or NBC?


Just be thankful they haven't taken over primetime every night...yet.


Is The Cube an ITV idea, or copied from another country? Is it even an ITV Studios production now?

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Diabolical for ITV1 last night. BBC1 did little better at 9pm though performed brilliantly before it. The other three terrestrial channels did well in the viewer vaccum created by the big two.

It's made by Objective Productions which is part of All3Media. It was originally piloted with Channel 4 who said it was too expensive but ITV picked it up. It's not made by ITV Studios.

In the US, it originally went into development with FOX but is now with CBS after FOX passed. Neil Patrick Harris is hosting the pilot.

Channel 4 had it in mind for a Sunday teatime slot but as C14E mentioned, it would have too expensive for that slot.

Channel 4's loss is ITV's gain. They really need more success with their own programming though.


I wonder how it would've done in the evening on Saturday/Sunday on Channel 4? Probably struggled considering the opposition.

Thanks to the both of you for your replies.

It might be good news in some ways for those that hate Holden. CBS apparently asked her to do some of the other award shows but she couldn't because of the BGT auditions. But if they keep offering her work she might be tempted to take something full time and move to New York.

Both Piers and Amanda have other things going on for them. Cowell could easily say "look what I've done for your careers, it's time to move on" and freshen things up for BGT series 5 because I think it will need it.

This series could have a really difficult time trying to maintain last years standards. They don't have a Kelly Brook situation, the only news from the auditions was of Simon taking 2 days off. And most importantly, they won't get a repeat of Susan Boyle.

Mind you, wasn't Susan just a female version of Paul Potts (with a slightly more sympathetic backstory)?

It'll be interesting to see how Britain's Got Talent does this year. I doubt either it or The X Factor will hit the heights of last year, but it just needs to keep the interest up.

Of course, The X Factor has the 'fourth judge' conundrum to keep interest going, with Danni's pregnancy overshadowing it even with six months to go before the first episode is aired.

The Kelly Brook situation was forgotten about by the time the series begun though, and it didn't boost the ratings. Louis Walsh's appearance won't either but they may be able to milk some drama out of Simon being ill. There won't be another SuBo but I think the success of the series depends more on the quality of the talent overall, as aside from SuBo last year's wasn't great, and the semi-finals weren't as good as 2008's.

As for the judges, I'm not sure Cowell will replace them as he actually seems to like them and get on with them outside the show (I doubt he invites Dannii Minogue and Kara DioGuardi to his house for dinner) and a fourth judge won't work, but as BGT is less about the judges than XF anyway I don't really think it matters.

A lot of ITV1's hit shows aren't produced by ITV Studios like The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent but I don't think that it is a bad thing because if ITV1 decided to only commision shows made by ITV Studios, they would miss out on potential hits from indies.

ITV Studios do produce a lot of non ITV shows, Countdown, Come Dine with Me and University Challenge being the obvious ones but they also produced Mo for Channel 4.

Didn't they also produce The Street for BBC1? Would they have benefited more financially from keeping these shows and airing them on ITV1, or do they get more from selling them on?

I guess University Challenge/Countdown have a much older audience, so it'd be better to sell on but with Come Dine With Me/The Street...?

BBC1 did little better? It got nearly double the audience.