For reference, between 16:00 and 17:00 on BBC One averaged 6.0m (46.4%).

Doctor Who - The Eleventh Hour: Breakdown
18:15 - 5.54m
----
18:20 - 6.57m
18:25 - 6.74m
18:30 - 6.91m
18:35 - 7.24m
18:40 - 7.51m
18:45 - 7.81m
18:50 - 7.89m
18:55 - 8.01m
19:00 - 8.04m
19:05 - 8.11m
19:10 - 8.17m
19:15 - 8.27m
19:20 - 8.39m
----
19:25 - 6.21m

Doctor Who - The Beast Below: Breakdown
18:10 - 4.91m
----
18:15 - 5.84m
18:20 - 6.02m
18:25 - 6.15m
18:30 - 6.21m
18:35 - 6.24m
18:40 - 6.50m
18:45 - 6.58m
18:50 - 6.72m
18:55 - 6.79m
----
19:00 - 5.68m

I'm not a violent man....Oh please lets hope so...may be he will do it on next weeks BGT!

Yeah, I agree here, and with comments of ITV's Harry Potter marathon.

I think ITV needed to save the Harry Potter premiere for a seasonal Wednesday evening, where kids would stay up till 10:-
7:00pm Emmerdale
7:30pm Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
10:00pm News at Ten

Or indeed, the Sunday slot it had last time...

Being Saturday and the weather did not help it, as most of my friends left the house halfway through to go out...I wonder what the breakdowns show.

As for Piers Morgan, in spite of Cowell's ratings, I think Saturday nights are the wrong night - and I think it could do with a weeknight slot.

I'd like to see a more ambitious, controversial set of guests for the next series, as Piers cuddles up to all of the celebrities and I don't see his line of questioning (in this series at least) as challenging.

However, I think the show itself works, especially with the montages which breaks everything up perfectly and gives the viewer a nice taster of the subject's life and work with some archive footage.

Next series, I'd like to see:-

- Michael Barrymore
- Tony Blair
- Tim Henman
- David Beckham
- Peter Andre
- Sir David Jason

I think this is a nice varied list. Two sportsmen, a politician, a "celeb", an actor and a fallen star.

Notice, no women - that wasn't on purpose!

I don't think ITV should be too obsessed with choosing "A-list" guests, as I think as long as the series average is OK (i.e. for every Michael Winner, there's a Simon Cowell) - it'll be long-lasting and popular.

I always think it's nice to go a bit off mainstream sometimes with the guests - as it's rare of ITV - and doesn't burn the candle at both ends - if you get what I mean. Too many big names in one series could be too much, too soon.

We don't know how much Ross got paid, we do know his production company got £6m a year.

The BBC have had the Saturday upper hand all year and it does beg the question of how ITV would look without the the Cowell bandwagon propping it up. BGT will sweep away the BBC's lead and will presumably aid Piers-who would seem desperately to need its assistance. Strange that his mug will be all over BGT as well.

The National peak almost two million ahead of the FA Cup semi peak. I saw the race in HD and it was quite stunning and there was a real atmosphere surrounding the result and the aftermath. What rating would that have got on SKY?

Dr Who ok I guess but i can see it becoming more and more squeezed by its early start time especially if the weather is good.

Solidish ratings for Over the Rainbow and another good night for the Lottery and Casualty-but surely all three will be hit by BGT.

Just awful rating for the FA Cup - god knows what today's will be, especially with a rival Premiership game on Sky.


Perhaps time to put your fantasy schedules away and think about the reality of ITV's situation for a moment.

I'd absolutely love the soaps tucked away in the 7pm hour and a varied mix of drama, comedy, entertainment and documentary from 8-10pm everynight - but that would cost ITV a fortune and as things stand rather than the Tuesday night flop zone, we'd probably be looking at that situation every night of the week.

It's a nice ambition, but something that can only be done when the cash is there, which it simply isn't at the moment.

There's a standout figure (for all the wrong reasons) in last nights set, and thats the FA Cup.

Its a semi-final between two of the top six or seven teams in the country, for gods sake! And all it can manage is a peak of 4.9m?! That's just abysmal and I don't think theres any way of excusing it. It's not the weather - 7.5m had just watched the peak of the Grand National. Frankly, at those sorts of ratings - the contract is a disaster for ITV, and I doubt the FA will be too thrilled, either.

EDIT: God, it's worse than I thought. From the same Saturday in 2008 - the last year of the FA Cup on the BBC:

12:00-14.30pm: Match of the Day Live: 3.4m (31.5%)

So thats beating ITV's average, for the same length programme, airing at midday. The titans contesting this encounter? West Bromwich Albion vs Portsmouth



--

About as I was expecting for Doctor Who. It got away with a reasonable rating despite the start time and the weather. The growth of a million from the start to the end of a 45 minute show demonstrates its something people tune in for. At least the latter half of the series - when it starts to get this warm on a regular basis - won't have OTR shoving its start time around.

Very solid figures for the HP premiere but Piers Morgan did awfully - can't say I'm surprised. We all saw what Winner did to ITV's Friday night ratings!

Though only highlights. And from Ofcom's website

"However, qualifying broadcasters are not obliged to bid for these rights, so it is possible that on some occasions listed events may not be shown by a qualifying broadcaster"
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/ifi/codes...prt_lstd_evts/

Still I hope there is coverage on terrestial tv

Not that I often spring to the defence of ITV - the match looked pretty good on ITV HD on Saturday, we had a GN family party and when people were thinning out I flipped over for the remainder of the football.

A 20% share however is pretty poor though - I would like a football match rating to be given for the actual game (ie average of 1st and 2nd half.)

Simple arithmetic here for Life Stories - MW + PM = RD (where RD = Ratings Disaster) - Piers is such a dullard, I did watch it and he sounds like the type of boring party guest who asks the wrong questions all the time. In the hands of dare I say it Parky, the life story and anecdotes of someone like Michael Winner could have been a lot more engaging.

I noted the BBC held a rating share of c. 25% from 5pm to 10pm so pretty good for the flagship channel. With BGT starting soon I hope the BBC can maintain it's share.

Lets hope so. The current BBC1 Saturday night schedule is quite strong with most shows getting 4-7m as opposed to ITV1's schedule which will realistically only have BGT as a succesful show. It's a bit like a metaphor to sum up ITV in general.

Wise man, Andy! I've always said no good comes from wearing shorts.

Here's hoping. He's awful time to ditch the tedious little man. If anyone had interviewed Cowell he'd of got massive figures. Just shows Piers's not the draw ITV make him out to be.

Him and Holden need to be weeded out of the schedules for all our sakes.

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A very good Saturday for BBC One. Nice to see Total Wipeout hitting 4m in 5.20pm slot on a warm spring Saturday. Good for Doctor Who too.

Next Saturday will be tougher for Over the Rainbow, but, from memory, and without checking the schedules, it has 45 minutes before Talent begins, so the ratings shouldn't collapse.

A dismal figure for Piers Morgan's chat show. It's all very well occasionally getting decent viewing figures with a high-profile guest, but a popular chat show host can get acceptable audience figures with any guest. Morgan is not the right man for the job as a Saturday night chat show host.

As for Britain's Got Talent, I don't really think it matters who shares the panel with Simon Cowell.

It means nothing though as over the years the main headline figure has usually been for the full programme, and then the peak - so we're still comparing like with like and 3.2m is at least a couple of million down on where it would have been when football was still popular!

On paper you can't see today's game beating that, but I can't imagine ratings much lower either. We're looking at a situation now where the FA Cup Final might be struggling to get too far past the 5m mark. I wonder with these ratings too whether ITV will cut the build up to the bare minimum (which in FA Cup final terms, is probably around an hour!).

Why are people not watching the FA Cup??

Is it because the core audience were at the pub watching it because of the weather?

Are you mad? Of course it would help, it would allow ITV to be able to spread out its entertainment offerings and air repeats at the same time.

So, you think a 2 hour Frost/Midsomer repeat from 8-10pm on Friday's would be a a flop? It's been proved time and time again that this isn't the case, drama repeats worked very well for ITV on Friday nights more than any other night for some reason, and will probably help with its ailing budget.

Thursday's were always popular in the 8pm, 9pm hour before ITV moved The Bill, so I don't see it becoming flop zone now unless the channel doesn't replace the soaps.

I see your point of it becoming another Tuesday without a 7:30pm lead-in, but if money's spent on original programmes and we saw the travellogues in the 9pm slot - I think ITV could be onto a winner.

Wednesday has football anyway?!??!?!?

and Monday...well...the Coronation Street at 8:30pm is perfectly fine, and works on this day.

Wonder what Coronation St will get tonight as I assume the Sunday episode is just a one off due to scheduling issues?

I've got no idea why its on tonight. I was under the impression that last Sunday's episode was to make up for only one episode on Friday, but I'm guessing now that the Sunday episode on Easter Sunday was planned way beforehand and in fact the episode tonight is to make up for only one on Friday.

Surprised ITV haven't been promoting it considering a biggish storyline is set to come to a head tonight.

The 2nd FA Cup Semi-Final is going into extra time, meaning that ITV's schedule will be running late.

I suspect that they will just change the edition of You've Been Framed! to a shorter length one.

Corrie's on tonight?! I bet it'll be the lowest rated of the year!

They used to bill the Grand National separately, I have the Radio Times from 1987 where the National is billed seperately. But it doesn't matter anyway, the Beeb will know what the audience is.


In addition, that match was also opposite Arsenal vs Liverpool on Sky. The most ridiculous thing about the FA Cup semi-finals is that ITV haven't even had the wit to schedule any highlights of either match, despite one being at 5pm on the day of a full fixture list and opposite Doctor Who, and one being opposite a Premier League match on Sky (and a Liverpool game not on the telly but on the radio and that), and both being in mid-afternoon, during the school holidays to boot. Yet they did a highlights show for the Sunday matches on the fourth round, both of which had been shown live.

I thought that too. Last Sundays episodes was obviously scheduled in advance as an Easter Sunday special, because it was set on Easter Sunday aswell. Tonights is just a follow up to Fridays episode isn't it?

I do reckon ITV are doing this purely to give the 8pm dramas a boost, because last year they all seemed to suffer IIRC without the Corrie lead in. ITV will want Foyles to get the biggest audience it can, considering how expensive it is, I would have thought.

I don't think this will be a regular occurence as ITV1 seem to prefer drama and entertainment on Sundays now. However, fans must get fed up with the way it gets moved around and miss episodes.

I cant remember if it has been reported here but the Boat Race peaked with 5.7 million at 4.40 which seems pretty good.
Re the FA Cup, its interesting that Match Of The Day got the same average as the semi final with just two unfashionable games to show. It seems that there is a culture that ITV and the FA Cup just dont go together.
Broadcast Magazine reported that ITV had a large 29.94% primetime share on w/c 29/3/10 with the BBC down at 16%.Does this seem right? In the equivalent week last year the BBC had a 3% peaktime lead. BBC are down 0.7% overall this year, ITV 1.2%