Thanks, Craig. Interesting that In It to Win It has already been filmed! Might be back earlier than usual!

If they win.

Figures to note for comparison:

Piers Meets Gordon.
overnights 3.91 in DS, (4.18m in Broadcast.)
officials 4.26m

Remember Brown's interview had the Dancing on Ice lead-in, which Cameron's special doesn't, and therefore Brown will probably win the chatshow war. Might as well let him win something, I suppose.

So ITV1 adopting a first-past-the-post system that favours Labour as well.

Still, that partly cancels out the anti-Labour bias on the ITV News. I keep expecting the announcer to announce "The ITV Early Evening News, sponsored by Conservative Central Office"

Regarding Piers' viewing figures, I'm sure when you compare the rating to all the other chat shows it is doing as well or better.

Parkinson in the last few years didn't used to set the world on fire and Jonathan Ross doesn't do particularly big numbers either.

That's because he moved to ITV!

He was getting 6-9m for his stronger shows on BBC1. Didn't a Christmas Eve edition once get 11m?

From what I remember, he ended up on around 4-5m in his last year or two at the BBC. He moved to ITV, where for the first year or two the ratings remained the same, but they fell towards the end and the majority of the last two series were sub 3m. Jonathan Ross also only ever gets about 3m nowadays too, and Norton is lower than that, so Piers' chatshow is the most watched chatshow on TV by a decent margin.

ITV hit last night unsurprisingly considering the football supplied the lead in. Taking that into consideration, TV Burp and Push the Button performed pretty well, and Piers and Simon did excellently.

BBC1 had a string evening throughout - but Casualty seems slightly on the low side still to me.

Just watched Stardust on C4. What a great little family movie that was for Oscars night.

I have high hopes for this ratings wise - easily clearing 3m, possibly even 4m+.

Second DoI will be dented I think.

With J. Ross is the share is nearly always good so you need to look at it in the context of his time slot. Not that he's really relevant anymore since he's leaving.

Graham's show also does well for its time slot.

At least Casualty is posting 5m+ numbers again. It could be worse, some of the ratings it was pulling during the X Factor months last year were horrid.

GeorgeS and Robbiesykes should have signature tunes like they have at the Darts.
This thread would be rather drab at times without their remote jousting.
As for the FA Cup, Im sure the Beeb will be able to cobble together a bid-though surely the FA will not be daft enough to go with ITV for another four years..................will they. Or is that naieve?

Very true - but then at least it had an excuse. I mean Life Stories didn't even manage 6m in the overnights yet Casualty fails to hit the mark.

If the BBC won back the FA Cup, maybe ITV would then win back the F1, or maybe the Premiership highlights again?. Despite what some people would wish, the BBC can't afford Premier League, League Cup, England, FA Cup, F1 and Rugby, so something has to give.

With the adverts during the race issue, it's probably better if it stayed as it is now, with the F1 on the BBC and the FA Cup on ITV.

Is it down on recent Casualty ratings? Mid fives always seems about right to me for Casualty. Obviously a far cry from its regular 7-8m heyday but that's true of all these continuing dramas look at The Bill.

And I'm sure Life Stories was stronger competiton than other ITV shows usually are against it.

I thought before The X Factor hit it it was in the low 6m's, so to me it's around 0.5m down - so a fall, but not as dramatic as The Bill's.

It's arguable how much Life Stories hit it...I don't think there's much change from last week where it was up agaist Mr. and Mrs.

Ah - that explains a lot.

Not been a great week for your lot has it? Cashcroft revelations; polls narrowing; Brown coming out of the Iraq Inquiry unscathed.

Dave's having a torrid time of it really. I can't see the ITV1 interview having much appeal either. :yawn:

im not going to mention The Bill but I will say that Casualty has a few problems, it needs to get rid of alot of the cast, who spend too much time not doing medical stuff, that might help them spend the budget on the accidents.

Thanks for that! Impressive ratings for ITV3's Mr Bean marathon.

Along with the equally popular Come Dine With Me catchup on More4, Sunday teatime is becoming a big multi-channel battleground.

Indeed, on that evening there must have been times where ITV3 and More4 combined had a higher volume of viewers than Channel 4, Five and BBC Two.

The BBC has a host of other cherries too-Wimbledon, World Snooker(plus three other tournaments), Boat Race, Grand National, Open Golf, Masters Golf, The Derby, BDO World and Masters Darts, Superbowl, British Indoor and Outdoor Athletics, plus further forays into lesser sports plus ofcourse the World Cup and Olympics.

When you add it to the rest its actually pretty impressive-especially after the low point of the late nineties. I wonder though whether it will become more difficult to hang onto these prizes.

And also cut the number of episodes per year from 48 to a much more sensible quota like 30.

This weekend last year Casualty had 6.37m but it was on at 8.30pm.

The general consensus in this thread is that 9pm is too late a slot for The Bill (even though that was where it began back in the day), and as I've said before, a post-watershed slot is too late for Casualty (even though it actually took off in the ratings when in a Friday 9.30pm slot back in the day).

They should really advertise this all:

World Hockey
Badminton
Wimbledon
World Snooker
Boat Race
Grand National
Open Golf
Masters Gold
The Derby
BDO World
Masters Darts
Superbowl
FIFA World Cup
Winter Olympics
Summer Olympics
Commonwealth Games
Six Nations
Indoor Athletics
Outdoor Athletics
London Marathon
Great North Marathon
Carling Cup
Sports Relief
Formula One
European Figure Skating Championships
Modern Penthatholon World Championships
Indian Premier League
British Trails Swimming
World Handball
European Weightlifting
World Diving
Champions League Play offs.
etc...

Agreed on Stardust. After a slow start I really enjoyed it. Anything with Sienna Miller in gets my vote.

Talking of votes, this thread has become very political. I wonder how bad it will get in here just before the elections when the debates air.