Oh I hadn't realised that. The usual GeorgeS spin then. God love him.

Is there any source other than the Sun for this because I just dont believe it really and the quotes are pretty laughable.
I remember in 2005, the tabloids were claiming that Simon Cowell was suing the beeb because of 'just the two of us' being similar to 'celebrity duets'.
Nothing came of that, I think Cowell made an American version which flopped for FOX and the beeb did 2 UK series and made versions in Australia, the netherlands, China, the netherlands and a few other countries.

Its very hard to show breach of copyright in regards tv shows.
Example RDF maker of Wife swap' dropped their suit against FOXs Trading Spouses as There is a test applied in the US courts where the show has to be the exact same to be labelled a rip off.
The only difference with Trading spouses was that they gave each a wife $50,000 dollars to spent on eachothers households at the end of the swap.

Im a Celebrity was ruled not to be a rip-off of Survivor because the show was presented in a humourous way.

Their have been numerous examples off these law suits which either never went to court or are thrown out of court.
FOX in the US have ripped off so many shows in the US its incredible, they had a Survivor rip-off Boot Camp, The Apprentice rip-off The Rogue Millionaire, a boxing show rip-off of the Contender, they also had Nanny 911 which was inspired by Supernanny. As one judge put it television shows have always borrowed off each other and always will.

Also there is already a 'skating with the celebrities' brand seperate from both ITV and the BBC which has aired around the world including America made by A. Smith & Co. Productions. Foxs aired it in America in 2006 and Nine in Australia as 'Skating on thin ice' and im fairly sure there is a French version.Also there is a similar show called 'battle of the blades' in Canada only they swap the celbrities with hockey players.

But finally Strictly ice dancing is a spin-off of strictly come dancing and its details were announced weeks before 'Dancing on ICE', and aired over a year before 'DOI'. So its not even a rip-off like all the Fox shows were

So for all those reasons I would find it hard to believe that ITV are even thinking of planing to sue.

E! bought Katie and Peter and showed it on every E! network outside the UK.

This led her to declare on Paul O'Grady that the show has a worldwide audience of 600m people.

I think what she meant was the "potential" audience - as in 600m people around the world have access to a network that was screening the show.

She is known around the World, but not so much mainstream, more gossip column. And in Australia as the ex Mrs Peter Andre.

On the reality show you saw her trip to Austria and how famous she is there is ridiculous. She got the honour of a private visit to the Spanish Riding School - normally reserved for royal visits only.

The ONE shows ratings depend on what it inherits from the Regional news. Due to the weird scheduling of that Van Gogh documentary.The beebs news ratings were very low. It did retain 100% of their lead in though

I don't just want to turn this thread into me quoting old TV schedules but 33 1/3 premiered at 9pm on Christmas Eve 1997. I dunno how badly it did but the ITV opposition was Black Velvet Band, a period drama starring Nick Berry and Todd Carty, part of Berry's golden handcuffs deals, and I don't think it did that well as I remember William Phillips in Broadcast remarking on its disappointing rating and saying "Presumably the public only like that face under a helmet".

Of course, they repeated all three Naked Gun films about a million times, somewhere I might still have a VHS where I taped the first one off a Sunday night in 1996.

The premiere of Wayne's World was on BBC1, on Tuesday 20th December 1994 at 9.30, although BBC2 did show it a couple of times - I remember it being on a Friday night once. Oddly the premiere of Wayne's World 2 was delayed for ages and went out after ten o'clock on a nondescript weeknight in April 1998.

Malice is such a forgettable film, by the way, I'd forgotten who was in it, it's not Meg Ryan, it's Nicole Kidman. And it's on BBC1 late one night next week. Oh, and I can pretty much guarantee HIGNFY won't be shown at 8pm on the day of the election debate. I know the BBC2 repeat, in the early days, used to go out at all kinds of weird times - around 6pm some times - but I'm pretty sure it's now a definite post-watershed show. Unless we're in an era when Mr and Mrs can go out at 9pm and HIGNFY at 8pm.

Sounds like the name for Cheryl Cole's next Single!

6.4.2010

Barcelona v Arsenal averaged 1.7m

Eastenders 7.9m / 35.7%
Masterchef 5m / 20.6%

Heston 2.8m / 11.5%
Shameless 2.4m / 13.1%

Great Ormond Street 2.4m / 9.8%

Emmerdale 6.6m / 32%
Children's Hospital 3m / 13.6%
Touched by Frost 3.3m / 13.8%
Law and Order 2m / 8.2%

I'm wondering if they'll bump HIGNFY for a week, and if the Wednesday 5th May recording date mentioned by a previous poster was set before the election date was announced, and just hasn't been changed yet.

Thanks dubsj

Both soaps considerably down on last week, but maintaining roughly the same shares, shows the Summer slump has started.

Very good audience for Masterchef considering how much it has been pushed around the schedules. For the first time in ages BBC1 have a decent Wednesday schedule, just a shame it is facing some of its toughest competition this year.

ITV1 is really becoming a disaster zone on Tuesdays. I reckon any other slot that Frost doc would have got 4m+. Also surprised L&O dropped considering the better lead in. Looking at those figures now, I really wouldn't be surprised if WWTBAM and The Bill fall below 3m...

Poor night for ITV1, not even the Frost documentary could get decent numbers, though it's slightly higher than what Cops with Cameras was getting. Terrible for the Law and Order repeat, bottom of the terrestrials in the slot.

MasterChef did well last night, but it'll be interesting to see if the final tonight can rate better as I'm expecting ITV to get somewhere between 6-7m for tonight's match. The peak for MasterChef should be good as the match should finish about 21:40, and usually there's a big switchover from ITV1 to other channels.

Some interesting BBC comissioning news:

Waterloo Road has been comissioned for a 7th series of 20 episodes, even though Series 5 still has 10 episodes left to air!

I'm starting to wonder if the BBC will just make this a year long show, considering apart from Masterchef and The Apprentice, Wednesdays don't have any returning hits. Personally though, I reckon this would lead to a decline in quality and I'm not sure if it would be able to sustain it's 4.5-5.5m ratings week in week out.

Something strange with EastEnders' ratings at the moment, quite low to be honest. Holby City at 8pm had 5.35m (22.7%) which for itself is quite low as well.

ITV did well by their normal Tuesday standards between 19:30 and 21:00, but then Law and Order repeat didn't do well.

The quality is shocking at the minute- a LOT of boring filler plots, poor continuity and lazy writing imo. This is more noticeable after the fantastic quality of January & February's episodes. I would understand why the steep decline in quality if March and April's episodes were under a new producer, but they aren't.

I reckon too much effort was put into Jan & Feb's episodes and no consideration was allowed for the episodes after that.

I thnk it's because all of the efforts at the time these episodes were shot was around the time of the live episode as well as the fact it's currently going through a bit of a changeover with the old producer leaving and new producer starting.

It does need to pull it's socks up though, December to February was a fantastic time for EE.

Interesting news about Waterloo Road. The BBC must really have a lot of faith in the show. I hope it doesn't become an all year round drama though. I like the format that it has now and wouldn't want it turning into another Casualty or Holby City style soap :sleep: Having said that, they'd probably hang onto viewing figures of between 4.5 - 6m. I guess it depends how creative or lazy the BBC want to be.

The soaps were low last night but as has been stated, the summer is commencing now. EastEnders is OK at the moment but the changeover in producer will mean it isn't at its best. Once Bryan Kirkwood's episodes start airing, I think the quality will rise considerably.

Anyone know how Hollyoaks did? Thanks

1.23m --> http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/soaps/ne...p-april-6.html

Nah, I don't think it'll be going year around, as if it did, that would only leave Sunday and Thursday 8pm slots free. They'll probably be looking for a roster of:

January - March - Masterchef
April - June - Waterloo Road
July - September - Celebrity Masterchef + filler
October - December - Waterloo Road

It's not really something that appeals to me, but it's doing good number for BBC One on Wednesdays since The Bill has been moved and provided some much needed stability on Wednesday. Also, crucially, I think it draws in quite a young audience, which can only be a good thing.

Oh dear, BSI strikes AGAIN:

Over the Rainbow Results
18:20 to 19:00 - Sunday 4th April
20:15 to 21:00 - Sunday 11th April
18:15 to 19:00 - Sunday 18th April



The 17th April schedule has been confirmed BTW:

5:35pm - All New Total Wipeout
6:35pm - Doctor Who
7:20pm - Over the Rainbow
8:30pm - The National Lottery: Who Dares Wins
9:20pm - Casualty

Been thinking of how ITV could solve their Tuesday 8pm problem and I really think they should experiment with New TV Burp episodes at 8pm, even for just a couple of weeks.

The reasoning is that basically early next year Primeval is set to return to Saturday nights and that'll occupy the 7pm-8pm slot. That means TV Burp would have to air at 6:30pm, which I think ITV consider a bit too early for the show these days (even though it used to be in that sort of slot for years). But that's not the only problem, the FA Cup Football means that on some weeks it would have to be dropped or moved to 7:20pm, causing Primeval to start at 7:50pm which is too late. It's not only Primeval which'd start too late but stuff like Take Me Out would be beginning close to 9pm which I don't think would work.

Also, TV Burp can get 5m+ on Saturday nights up against shows which get 7m+ (Strictly, Let's Dance) so I see no reason why it wouldn't be able to get 5m+ up against Holby City. With New You've Been Framed following at 8:30pm, the hour could be a good rating one for ITV1. What's the harm in trying it out for a couple of weeks to see how the ratings are, and if it does badly then just slot it back to Saturday nights. It's the only thing which I can see sorting out ITV1's Tuesday night problems without moving the soaps around yet again.


1.24m including +1.


I'm not surprised as the last series rated really well. Also, the same website says that New Tricks' new run this year will be 10 episodes, so that's 2 more than usual. Obviously BBC want to make most of their best rated drama.


Over The Rainbow is going to get crushed.

The schedule isn't confirmed yet, it's still provisional and it'll probably change again before the final update this afternoon. Hopefully Over The Rainbow will be back at 8.15pm on Sunday.


Yeah I like the sound of this, they could even run YBF repeats in the 7.30pm slot before it to give it a more suitable lead in. Yes, it would mean two episodes of YBF but ITV often run hour long episodes anyways so it's not really an increase. I can see them trying this in the Atumn, as The Cube isn't returning until Q4, so they've got an extra hour long entertainment show in Q4 they didn't have last year, so perhaps that'll slot in on Sundays at 7pm, with Family Fortunes at 7.15pm on Saturdays before X Factor, meaning that Harry Hill hour would need to be moved, and I think this is the best place to move it to.

It is confirmed. See: http://uk-tv-guide.com/list/BBC+1+Mi...0April%202010/ along with the BBC1 listings until the 23rd (you can tell its confirmed as all 9pm slots are filled in)

It's that gap between the filming of the episodes between the episode before the fliming of the of the live episode and the episode after the live episode.

So there is a 3/4/5 week episode gap of filler as the cast couldn't know the killer, so any reference would have to be on episodes filmed after the live episode.

Oh dear, how stupid are they? They've just thrown OTR to the lions on both days. Idiots.

Most weird one is in documentaries called OurLives: Half Cut Woman. Not a suprise that its for Sky One really, because they only seem to commision weird documentaries.

Who thinks this is a good idea?!?! I mean really - do they draw the scheduling out of a hat!!!

I do think that the 8:15pm result show is a bit too late for a show that is aimed at families and will suffer from starting 15 minutes into Foyle’s War. A better (and constant!) schedule would be:

18:15 - Countryfile
19:15 - Over The Rainbow Results
20:00 - Antiques Roadshow
21:00 - Drama/factual

Over The Rainbow really is going to turn into a train-wreck though. The fact that the first live show only got 5.5m shows that the audience simply don't care about 11 random women signing, and I believe this is down to the lack of a proper audition stage. There's no need to ridicule people like TXF and BGT do, but the audience should be given a bit of time to get to know the names and faces of the contestants. Also, they really should have left it until the summer, as it's going to be crushed by BGT.

They could have launched the show on July 10 (day before the WC final), have the auditions Monday to Friday of the following week at 7pm (The One Show will probably take a break during the WC), announce the ten finalists on July 17, and then launch the live shows on July 24, running them until early September. It would have boosted the summer period (which currently looks pretty barren) and would have preserved one of BBC One's only light entertainment strands. As it stands, if the figures start to slide once BGT starts, I could see this being the last musical search.