Isn't the Billie Piper show actually produced by "SHOtime" in the USA? It's a HBO style broadcaster so they can afford it, SHOtime are more like 'ITV' and HBO more like 'BBC' if you know what I mean.

Mind you he can't lose, it's a 20th Century Fox TV produced show for the Fox Network.

or they think it's the biggest con since ..... er ....... sliced bread

seriously though I'm not the slightest bit impressed by any of the HD offerings. I've seen the slight (imo) difference between standard and HD broadcast round a mates house and I've to be convinced that it isn't completely overrated

The constrast between my Freeview box and standard analogue is very noticeable. The constrast between HD and my Freeview box is negligible in my eyes

I'm sure others have different experiences, but for me HD is nowt special

Fantastic rating for Doctor Who as it hits 8.6m when taking into account the HD broadcast (461,000). Outnumbered got 6.37m and Ashes to Ashes 5.73m.

Foyle's War finished it's run with 7.4m. Worryingly though, Marco's Kitchen Burnout makes it into the top 30 with a rating of just 2.67m!!!

If Mike Teevee is still kicking about, why is Five Daughters only in the BBC One chart once, even although the news, Eastenders and The One Show get multiple entries?

didn't it start on Sunday?

I think the subsequent episodes will be in next week's top 30's

Doesn't the sample period end on Sunday 25th. So the remainder should turn up on the next weeks figures.

Sat 1st May overnights

BBC2
23:00 - I’m in a Rock ‘n’ Roll Band! - 910k (7.9%)
00:15 - Heroes - 290k (4.5%)
00:50 - Heroes - 280k (6.5%)

BBC3
19:10 - Doctor Who Confidential - 516,000 (2.5%), BBC HD 103k (0.4%)

BBC4
21:00 - Wallander (Swedish version) - 422k (2%)


That was Heroes season finale going out with a wimper at nearly 1am. The season average on BBC2 has been 794k (4.3%) while the previous season averaged 2.3m (9%).
I’m in a Rock ‘n’ Roll Band! was originally scheduled for 9:40pm and Heroes for 10:40pm.


Source: media guardian, attentional

Ah, of course - apologies

does ITV really have £2million to blow on one pay cheque on a late night ITV 2 drama?

Lewis seems to have done well on the ITV HD channel. The split according to Media Guardian was 7.226m (30.5%) on ITV1 and 223k (0.9%) on ITV HD. So making 7.449m (31.4%) in total.

Forgetting it's May already - surprised though FOX will run the finale in a slot I assume is outside of the sweeps.

I know it was on late..but what a fall in four seasons: from over 4m to just 0.3m

-----

Back to last night, pretty much as expected for all.

Countryfile dented Emmerdale more than I expected though, I thought it would share The One Show's audience, but obviously not.

George Gently would have been much better starting at 9pm. Corrie has a huge cliffhanger at 8pm and people weren't going to switch over to a drama repeat at 8.30pm. Very poor scheduling there anyway. Not even ITV would schedule a recent drama repeat in a primetime Monday slot.

Nile has benefited from poor competition and I expect had it been given the Sunday 7pm slot it would just have gone past 3m. A lot of these factuals on ITV1 depend on the scheduling-if Greatest Cities was on Mondays it would probably have got a similar figure to Nile.

Solid night for FIVE between 8-10pm. FlashForward pretty much solid on 1.5m every week which is decent, considering it pulls in a huge timeshift to over 2m. Bit surprised though to see FIVE dish out on a big advert to advertise Mondays with The Gadget Show, FlashForward and Good Times. FlashForward looks set to be axed and Good Times is never going to increase.

Also interesting to see FIVE's audience double in the 6.30-7.30pm slot with no LFSF.

But as I said in my post last night there is something not quite right about the HD viewing figures all round.

On Saturday the figures show nearly half a million watching Doctor Who on BBC HD. The following programme (Over the Rainbow) was also simulcast on BBC 1/HD but got hardly ANY HD viewers at all according to the figures published here. Yet its SD rating was not massively below Doctor Who.

This certainly suggests that they have yet to get right the proper accounting of HD figures as that discrepancy seems tough to explain otherwise.

I wouldn't really say there is much crossover audience between Dr Who and Over the Rainbow, and perhaps it could be that those watching drama (especially a cult show like DW) are more likely to watch in HD than a singing competition.

ABC:
8pm - Dancing With The Stars - 17.52m (4.0)
* Season low, down 10% from last week
9.30pm - Romantically Challenged - 10.56m (2.5)
* Will drop in final ratings due to DWTS overrun
* Series low
10pm - Castle - 10.77m (2.6)
* Beat CSI: Miami in viewers but lost by 0.1 in the demo

CBS:
8pm - How I Met Your Mother - 7.40m (3.1)
* Down nearly 20% in viewership vs last year
8.30pm - Rules of Engagement - 7.21m (2.7)
* Not doing any better than Accidentally On Purpose
9pm - The Big Bang Theory - 11.55m (4.5)
* Special timeslot
* Season low among adults 18-49
* Down 12% from last episode
9.30pm - The Big Bang Theory - 10.30m (3.6)
* Repeat
10pm - CSI: Miami - 9.62m (2.7)
* Lowest ever rating for an original episode

FOX:
8pm - House - 9.73m (3.8)
* Season low
* Down 10% from last week
* Tied DWTS for the lead in A18-49 at 8-9pm
9pm - 24 - 9.12m (2.9)
* One of its better recent ratings

NBC:
8pm - Chuck - 5.28m (1.9)
* Tied for season low
9pm - Law & Order - 5.06m (1.3)
* Repeat
10pm - Law & Order - 6.14m (1.7)
* New episode

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/05/04...ill-tops/50395

After some good numbers on Thursday and Sunday, it's back to season and series lows.

Rough night for CBS with everything down quite a bit. Rules of Engagement isn't doing too well either. Castle was up vs last year, even though last year it had a direct DWTS lead-in.

American Idol should reclaim the title of most watched show of the week following the decline for DWTS and Glee will still be the #1 scripted show in the key demo.

I wonder if CBS' scheduling of repeats has hurt their lineup, the Monday shows seen to have been in repeats for weeks.

The CSI Franchise is looking shaky at the moment and CBS should consider ending them in the next few years rather than cancelling them so that they get closure and a proper finale.

Yeh, I think it shows they just didn't expect the show to be back in the spring at all.

Next year I'm sure they'll bring it back a bit earlier and have it tied up in sweeps.

The soaps back to the top of their game last night with Coronation Street and EE getting 9m+.

Joanna Lumley's Mile still getting solid ratings, meanwhile C4struggles yet again.

Some really strange scheduling next week.

So ITV have two filler factual programmes in the Monday and Thursday 9pm slots. Both wouldn't look out of place on FIVE and it's obvious that Tuesdays 9pm offerings and The Bill have just been swapped round, and neither are benefiting at the minute. I doubt both will do very well and it looks like ITV's Spring will continue to be pretty poor. Just looking at the latest BARB figures 4 9pm slots under 3m, one just over and only two over 4m.

Also why have ITV moved the Soap Awards to avoid clashing with the football? Both surely attract completely different audiences. Instead they are opting for Midsomer Murders, why would this be dented any less?? ITV are really messing about with Midsomer lately.

Not quite sure why CH4 insist on having Location, Location on Thursdays at 8pm. I seem to remember it held up well against the soaps last time it was on, but it was dented quite a bit. Also it doesn't seem that long ago that it was on.

I've noticed aswell lately BBC2 have been pulling a couple of shows e.g. Out Of The Frying Pan on Mondays and Who Needs Fathers on Wednesdays.

The match and the Soap Awards are both something people prefer to watch whilst they're being broadcast. Because of the two completely different demographics, there would be a lot of fighting over the remote that night and would no doubt dent both!

Looking at season/series lows are always depressing. It's even more depressing that these lows are during May sweeps. That being said, is Castle ready to hold on its own, or does it still need that DWTS lead-in? It's only on season 2, but if it can build up from Romantically Challenged, it must have some potential. DWTS is down and I think it might hang around that figure until the final four.

Chuck's future looks more grim than ever. L&O figures are dreadful. It may be time for NBC to give that show a rest. House is still performing, despite the show's season low. Great 18-49 figures for The Big Bang Theory (again despite its low). As for the CSI franchise, it is slowly fading away.

\
Out Of The Frying Pan was moved last week because of the snooker, and it's being re-scheduled to Wednesdays from now on, they made an announcement at the end of the last episode. I only know this as it's a guilty pleasure of mine
Maybe Who needs fathers is being moved as well?

Wormwood Scrubs is another behind the scenes at a prison documentary like Holloway last year, which got about 4m in the flopzone so I think that'll do OK. It is completely obvious that Tuesday and Thursday have just been swapped but Greatest Cities has been dented badly by the debates, and I think it could have got 3.5-4m had it not aired against them. All At Sea sounds similar to Three Men In A Boat, which usually gets 3-3.5m. in the slot it's in, I can see All At Sea pulling in around 3.5m, so nothing special. ITV's Spring has been pretty poor, but the Summer looks better for them after the World Cup with Identity, 71 Degrees North, Father and Son, Poirot, Marple, Midsomer, Magic Numbers and the last ever episodes of The Bill which surely will be boosted with a bit of hype.


On the face of it this does seem idiotic but I actually think it'll work in Midsomer's favour as it'll actually be running in the same slot for two weeks in a row for once, rather than being on, missing a week and then airing another episode. Also, ITV won't want Junior Apprentice to take off like the regular version, so they probably think Midsomer has more of a chance of denting it than the Soap Awards, which The Apprentice walked all over last year.

As for last night, uninspiring all round, really. Countryfile and Countrywise both did well, and Lumley has performed well throughout and won the slot comfortably. It's 4.7m series average makes it the most popular of all of ITV's recent celebrity authored journeys.

I'm amazed that the US networks continue to put on repeats when it does seem like they can kill a shows momentum, particularly serialised shows (Desperate Housewives/Grey's Anatomy). There's no doubt that CBS repeats do well, but they do hit the original episodes when they return.

TBBT aired:

an original on the 8th of March
missed a week
had another new episode on the 22nd
missed 2 weeks
had an original on April 12th
then missed another 2 weeks
before last nights episode.

I think they would be far better concentrating on putting original material at 9pm and 10pm throughout the season and leave 8pm for repeats from March. As we can see, shows at 8pm can really struggle just now with the weather being better and the shows at 9/10pm are being hit by the endless interruptions.


I think they did expect it back, it was their big hope for this season. AFAIK, it's because Glee takes so long to produce that they needed such a big gap. The return date was announced well in advance.

However, they had to axe a reality series that was due to air in the Tuesday 9pm slot and some episodes of American Idol were extended to 2 hours so Glee could have been brought back earlier to fill those spots (if it was ready).

One other thing is that it will have to run its final episodes without an American Idol lead-in.

Another day, another person's take.

Yesterday someone said it was looking good for an early renewal if it produced another solid rating! I do accept 1.9 in the demo probably wasn't what they had in mind, but still.