Apparently they let David Jason choose which ending will be shown, so it's nothing to do with ITV. I guess he'll go with whichever ending is best both dramatically and for the character. Either way, I agree, it'll hopefully be huge.

Not too much like it, I hope! I saw most of last night's repeat, and I thought it was dire. It was as if I'd stepped back in time to the 1980s. The show opened with a 1989 Jasper Carrott joke which actually turned out to be the highlight of the whole thing. Other "gems" included a ventriloquist act which made Keith Harris and Orville look cutting edge, and Joe Pasquale wheezing through the same unfunny guff he's been trotting out for years.

I kept expecting the Roly-Polys and Bernie Clifton's ostrich.

The Boat Race did pretty well for BBC One yesterday with a strong 3.4m average over almost 2 hours. Thats a significant improvement on last year (albeit with a better timeslot). It will be the sort of event that has a very sharp peak so hopefully a 15 or even 5 minute number might emerge when the usual suspects start updating their ratings sites after the weekend.


Reality TV has an inherent advantage in terms of media hype simply because it is real. People can be interviewed and stories expanded on exclusively in the media. Thats very attractive to newspapers - their coverage can follow up on stories within the show and sell themselves to viewers as a continuation of the story telling you "what happened next". Obviously, the scope for selling newspapers based on speculation and reaction to a drama is much more limited. We won't be seeing much more DW in the papers for three months now.

Also to add, I don't think the actual talent has a massive amount to do with success. Memorable contestants (for any reason) help but only because they offer easily-constructed stories. Take XF last year - was there any outstanding talent? Really? Nothing exceptional IMO. But it worked, because a couple of attention grabbing twins were packaged and sold brilliantly. The success of these talent shows has far more to do with the skill and artistry of the production teams than the talent available.

True!


Interesting. I wonder if he's made up his mind yet, or maybe he'll put in a telephone call to ITV HQ tomorrow at 8.55pm.

I am going to stick my neck out and say that BGT will flop this year. Expectations are big, following on from Susan Boyle and last year's X Factor, which will mean a strong opening, but I have read on forums and from reports of the judges themselves that this year is disappointing.

The judging panel is tired and old, especially as Morgan and Holden are wheeled out every other week for something. They do need fresh faces who the public actually like. The semi finals were embarassing last year, with some real third-rate crap. Whether you bought into it or not, the Susan Boyle phenomenon meant the show became the biggest show in the world for a few weeks but also made it hard for it to ever escape her shadow.

If you're right, I'm looking forward to the MG headlines.

This one was an instant classic earlier in the year:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010...s-simon-cowell

The Boyle thing was staged to perfection and became a tidal wave. However it was staged and the public know it was, so they will be wary of people making a mess and then redeeming themselves in the way that SB did. Another Susan Boyle will be harder to sell.

Having said that, there is nothing like BGT, the BBC wont go anywhere near the formula and so I think BGT will have a big springboard of expectation(and a wall of sound promotion) and get some excellent early ratings. Whether they continue will be down to the standard I guess.

Couldnt agree more. Remember XF was consistantly behind SCD for several years before this amazing surge. The team behind both shows have pulled out just about every stop possible to produce an extraordinary leap to record breaking figures. Some of it approaches brainwashing imo but it is non the less, an astonishing achievement.

BGT will definally be down on last year as there won't be another SuBo. It might be worth comparing with both 2009 and 2008 to get an accurate impression on how it rates.

We face the usual suspects saying it is a flop when it 'only' gets 10m.

Whatever happens, surely BBC One's ratings against the final can't be as low as last year's?

Points of View was back today and they picked up on BBC1's habit of sticking a repeat of a drama on at the end of the series. i.e 7 episodes, 6 new ones and a repeat.

It was suggested by a viewer that if they are showing repeats, why not just repeat the whole series not just one episode.

The BBC's response was that it gave viewers a chance to see a programme they may have missed, i.e skirting over the issue completely!

With both The Door and Comedy Rocks, there were good programmes waiting to get out, and with some adjustment they could become hits.

I imagine they will both be dumped and it'll be back to the drawing board yet again, no wonder TV seems to be running out of new ideas.

Ant and Dec finally losing their magic touch it seems. It's sort of their own fault for not moving away from kids TV sort of stuff. (BGT rates well more in spite of them while people tune into IAC for the celebs as proved by the ratings going up for Tits Price).

XF and BGT are talent contests, not reality shows, but I know what you mean. For all XF and BGT have no repeat or DVD potential, the huge audiences, the constant tabloid attention and the spin offs with new singers and dancers is very attractive to ITV. I'm sure BGT helped to revive ITV's dire finances last year. Also Su Bo gave ITV1 10 million viewers for a rather good special.

They're the best thing about IAC.

This show is poor though. They should bring back Pokerface - one of their better ideas and actually a very good gameshow.

We've had this discussion before, but they are reality shows. Even Cowell descibes them as such. The talent aspect is just a sub category of that.

It's going to be down. We all know that. It peaked last year primarily because of the SuBo hype.

The judging panel needs a revamp anyway and both Holden and Morgan should be dropped. It's bizarre that two of the judges are actually very unlikeable. I don't know anyone who actually likes them.

I quite like C14E's suggestions but don't think Ross would do it. I'm sure Charlotte would jump at the chance though - didn't she say she'd like to be an X Factor judge? BGT is the next best thing.

Considering Simon is so fixated on refreshing The X Factor every year it's strange that BGT has barely changed since the first series.

Yes, you'r right, but like Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, it worked better when it was split over 7 days.

I think both of these would dominate ratings if this happened, as it would turn both shows into event television once again. Plus, both have £1m prizes.

Maybe people's tastes might change as it's a new decade. I know a lot of XF fans who say it's run its course now and if the acts are mediocre on BGT, then people will stop watching. However, these are ITV's big hitters and the finals get audience figures not seen since the three channel era. Bet the producers of Coronation St wished their soap attracted 18 million again.

Sorry, but I don't think Millionaire is capable of doing much ratings wise now. There's still a core audience there of around 3-4m that will watch but most are bored with the format. Some of the changes brought in actually made it even less watchable.

Only place for it now where it could have a future is daytime TV IMO. But I don't think Tarrant would be happy about that.

I disagree, because both are very bad formats.

ITV is good at variety nights, but Jason Manford's Comedy Rocks was not great. It belongs on Saturday nights at 9pm, but obviously not this format - another one.

As for The Door, it's a blatant cross between The Crystal Maze and I'm a Celeb. Plus, it has celebrities, so it's not really a gameshow because there's nothing to be won.

I'd prefer a Thursday 8pm slot for the more adventurous/physical gameshows:-

- The Whole 19 Yards
- The Crystal Maze
- The Krypton Factor
- Robot Wars rip-off

which could slot alongside a new batch of 8pm dramas, dropping Emmerdale/Coronation Street (i.e. moving it somewhere else, perhaps Tuesday's).

This means ITV can carefully spread out their entertainment. With not much on BBC1 on Thursday's as it is, it's the perfect time to grab the much-needed younger audience.

It would be university students watching Crystal Maze I suppose, as well as others. I think it could definitely, with enough hype and David Tennant as host, pull 5-6 million viewers on a weekly basis.

But yeah, speaking as an 18-year-old myself, Thursday nights between 8pm-10pm is the perfect opportunity to appeal to younger audiences as well as the mass.

7:30pm - EastEnders - BBC1
-----------------------------------------------------
10:00pm - Skins/Inbetweeners/Misfits - E4

In the 8pm slot, The Bill used to attract a good following of younger viewers. Perhaps one of the reasons was not merely the content, but the slot it was in, right after EastEnders. Now, it's squeezed out by BBC1 crime drama and simply the fact that it's not the same drama anymore.
--------------

In conclusion, surely everyone agrees that ITV needs to spread its entertainment out a bit, as it has a very large package, but usually all spread across a whole Saturday or Sunday. It would be nice if it was given an hour on Thursday to even things out.

Although, I still think a Harry Hill hour on Friday nights from 8pm-9pm is perfect family viewing, just before youngsters go out (if they're going out), and also perfect for commuters. YBF would lose to EastEnders by quite a margin, but TV Burp should pull 6-7 in the 8:30pm slot.

Saturday nights are all about a variety of programming anyway, and ITV has enough of it, not mentioning Primeval returning next year too, along with Take Me Out! So it's more packed than usual.

And of course, there is speculation that the soaps will return to Sunday too, so that will also mean things will have to be spread.

From any time spent in the X Factor forum on here, fans have being saying that it has run its course for the past 5 years!

I think the acts do make a difference and the show did perhaps lose some momentum towards the end of last series. It didn't decline badly, but it didn't seem to build either. XF5 was a big success and it followed the dire talent from series 4 so I don't think there will be a hangover from XF6.

But the big name guests, the judges and the contestants personalities and scandals can keep things going even if the talent isn't great.

Creek and Frost will probably cancel each other out, particularly as the Easter holiday weekend is hardly condusive to large audiences, and two big popular dramas are starting in broad daylight during the summer months.

My prediction is Frost to get 6.6m tonight and Creek 5.7m - and for David Renwick to say "thanks but no thanks" the next time the Beeb beg him to come up with more of the groundbreaking and unique comedy drama for which he is renowned.

After the way he has been treated, why would he bother?

For those talking about Comedy Rocks, ITV1 from 22:30 to 23:00 had 1.6m (8.9%), so presumably the full hour from 22:30 to 23:30 had even less, I'd guess at around 1.4 million.

EDIT: Digital Spy's breakdowns should remove 19:25 to 19:30 for Mr and Mrs and remove 19:55 to 20:00 for Coronation Street.

Will be interested to see if Jonathan Creek is boosted because of Coronation Street's early finish.

Hope everyone is having a nice Easter break...if you're getting an Easter break. Pretty poor figures all round this weekend, but as someone said earlier on in the thread, Easter is much more of an 'out and about' holiday than Christmas.

Ashes to Ashes really shouldn't be on a Friday. Silent Witness did so well there earlier in the year as the nights were darker and (I'm guessing) it skews older than A2A. As others have said, Monday is where a flagship drama of its quality belongs.

Good figures for Doctor Who last night, but it probably could have added about 0.5m if it had been on half an hour later. I don't think it'll be suffering from people switching off due to a dislike of Matt Smith though, as he was superb, as was the entire episode.

Over The Rainbow figures a bit on the low side - I'd have liked to see it hit 6m. There's definitely a problem with the way BBC One auditions these shows. The problem is that they're basically 10 random girls up their signing, rather than anyone with a 'story'.

Total Wipeout really is being wasted in that early evening slot. I think BBC should be commissioning a few quiz shows to go in that 5:30-6:15 slot for the spring/summer months. There’s less people about to watch TV at that time, so why waste one of your strongest entertainment brands there.

I think Alexander Armstrong's BBC Two quiz Pointless could do good business in there (anyone got any figures of how the show does just now?). Or why doesn’t BBC One run the new series of Doctor Who over the summer in the early evening slot to give viewers a second chance to catch episodes. Running cheaper/repeat shows in this slot means they could concentrate their resources later on in the night.