More than likely its the old practice of putting down any old times in the provisionals. The 20 mins will be taken off Who and given to Casualty and then you have your schedule.

seems to me that the BBC (or any TV channel) should be able to do a better job than that.

Seems like the BBC schedulers have been taking drugs.

If the third debate in on 29th April on BBC One, it means that Outnumbered and HIGNFY will have to move, unless BBC One do:

19:00 - EastEnders
19:30 - The Third Debate
21:00 - HIGNFY
21:30 - Outnumbered

Don't look at the scheduling for A Passionate Woman. It's not worth it.

HIGNFY is 9 weeks, Outnumbered is 6 weeks, so 3 weeks to fill in. Tonight is 1 week. Expect the election debate to be another.

So....
19:00 - The One Show
19:30 - Eastenders
20:00 - Election Debate
21:30 - HIGNFY

That would be a very nice schedule. HIGNFY is the perfect show to go on after the debates and should boost the News after. You could even have bigger audiences for Question Time and This Week aswell.

Actually why not? Although it's not designed as pre-watershed stuff, Outnumbered could find an audience much better at 9pm than 9.30pm I think and inherit quite a few viewers from the 8pm hour who might not stick with HIGNFY.

Or...

20.00 Election Debate
21.30 Have I Got News For You Live

That would be good.

Article about Dannii Minogue on Daily Mirror website says Ultimate Movie Toons got good ratings on Sunday. Anyone know what the ratings were?

3.5m (16%). Hardly what I'd call good, but I guess it was OK for the timeslot.

There was a thread about this earlier I genuinely thought it was an Aprils Fool. I like Danni(though not her TV shows), but Ultimate toons bombed pretty much, no?

They think 3.5m is good? OK... I wonder what their average expectation was then?

BTW, what do we think BBC and ITV will do for election coverage? Start at 10pm and just run through, or will both channels break to news coverage at 9pm?

I can't remember what happened in 2005, but arguably the chances of a change in power are much greater this time than in 2005.

Also, do we expect rolling coverage throughout the next day, i.e. so the schedules look like:

Thursday 6th May into Friday 7th May
BBC One
19:00 - The One Show
19:30 - EastEnders
20:00 - BBC News Special
21:00 - Have I Got News For You
21:30 - ??? (Vicar of Dibley repeat possibly)
22:00 to 13:45 on Friday - Election 2010
13:45 - Doctors
14:15 - Murder, She Wrote
15:05 - CBBC
17:15 - BBC News Special
20:00 - EastEnders
20:30 - as normal

ITV1
19:00 - Emmerdale
19:30 - ITV News Special
20:00 - Emmerdale
20:30 - Coronation Street
21:00 - The Bill
22:00 to 06:00 - Election 2010
06:00 - GMTV
09:25 to 19:00 - ITV News Special
14:00 - as normal

Or am I over-exagerrating slightly?

What has happened for previous elections? I cannot imagine there being normal schedules the next day, that is for sure.

Thats great for the time slot it got

I'd say the normal News at Ten shows will be on won't they? On the off chance that something relatively big happened, it'd still warrant reporting.

A YouTube video of the opening of the 2005 election coverage showed that the BBC started at 9.55pm. They announce the exit poll results (which were almost entirely accurate last time) right on 10pm so need to be on air. They might just squeeze 5 minutes by cutting out trails earlier in the evening - or they could chose to just run a half hour from 9pm and have more build-up.

I imagine the networks will stay on air until one side concedes defeat the following morning. Of course, if we wind up heading towards a hung parliament, that might never happen...

On the leaders debates, i've read on another forum , that leading up to the ITV debate (presumely on the Thursday 15th as said previously) that on Monday 12th, Tuesday 13th, Wednesday 14th there will be Tonight specials - not sure how reliable it is , but i've read something on Mark Austin/Julie Etchingham's blog that definately suggests there be some sort of specials.

The exit polls is a big moment. They do the same thing in France and the US. If it's definitive enough they can revealed the winner as soon as polls close with 99% certainly. Not that it will happen like that this time.

They probably won't go on air any earlier than 9.55pm because there are very tight restrictions on election day tv coverage. You are barely allowed to say anything more than that the polls are open while they are.

Correct:




There's also during that week:


And


The second one is exceptionally stupid scheduling as it will be, for the few weeks against Question Time.

Lewis, Midsomer Murders, Foyles War, A Touch of Frost and the British Soap Awards not to mention Champions League football should all deliver around 6m or more.

Identity seems like the kind of thing that could do well on Mondays. Hard to say for sure, but The Whole 19 Yards could do reasonably like The Cube and 71 Degrees North does seem like a decent concept.

None of them will come close to BGT, but then again, nothing on BBC1 will either.

The problem for BBC1/ITV1 isn't just that they don't have the shows, but just that they didn't seem to broadcast many of them in March.

ITV2 is even more commercial and, apart from its reality shows, mostly just shows repeats, soap omnibuses and chick flicks. However, unlike ITV1, this is a niche channel- mostly for young women- and does well in its demographic as well as being the biggest digital channel in Britain and must turn in a decent profit.

You are a man, ITV2 is aimed at young women. ITVs m/c stable is very profitable (no doubt driven by ITV2 and to a lesser extent ITV3). IIRC ad revenue for ITV2+3+4 is about £250m, programming budgets about £80m

only if HIGNFY is done live.

They can't start at 9pm due to reporting restrictions, so most likely will be 10pm with the news incorporated into the election programming.

Be interesting now ITV own GMTV whether they might go right through to 9.25am and possibly beyond. I recall reading more results will be declared the next day rather than overnight this time.


Although in the past QT has moved to primetime during the election, but that's when they've done the Ask the Leaders specials, which may not happen this year due to the debates. Personally I much prefer this format as it puts the leaders and their own policies in the spotlight, rather than being about point scoring with your opponents.

ABC:
8.30pm - The Middle - 6.21m (1.9)
9pm - Modern Family - 9.34m (3.8)
9.30pm - Cougar Town - 5.99m (2.6)
10pm - Ugly Betty - 4.06m (1.4)

FOX:
8pm - Human Target - 8.18m (2.3)
9pm - American Idol - 19.96m (6.5)

NBC:
10pm - Law & Order: SVU - 9.96m (2.9)
____________________________

American Idol will move up a bit as it overran so it should pass the 20m mark. However, I believe that is the lowest adults 18-49 rating for a regularly scheduled in-season American Idol broadcast ever (in other words, lowest since the debut season, which aired in the summer). This year, the results shows are underperforming vs the performances, a reverse of the situation last year.

Also, this weeks most watched show on US television is Dancing With The Stars. On Monday it had 22.97m, ahead of Idol's 21.85m on Tuesday.

Modern Family is doing great but in turn, it makes Cougar Town look bad. NBC will be happy with L&O: SVU's performance at 10pm just now.

CBS ran repeats.

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/04/01...-for-nbc/46960

The problem for ITV is that the shows you have flagged as being 6m bankers all take up very small amounts of the schedule. Lewis is a 4 part series, Frost has only 2 episodes left, Foyles War is 3 episodes, Midsommer is on once in a blue moon, Champions League is once every 2 weeks at ceratin times of the year and Soap awards are an annual event. Most of the time the schedule is propped up by the soaps and filler apart from when one of the reality shows is on.

The BBC's main strength are the returning series it relies on. Doctor Who being 13 episodes, Ashes To Ashes is 8 episodes and Waterloo Road another 10 episodes are some examples.

Midsomer does around 8 episodes a year though, so even though they air as one offs rather than series generally, with perhaps a short 'series' in the Summer, it does take up around 16 hours of the schedule, more than Doctor Who and Ashes to Ashes. Foyle and Lewis are also two hours per episode remember, so even though they are only 3 and 4 episodes each, they run for 6 and 8 hours each, which is a fairly normal length. They also have 3 episodes (6 hours) of Poirot, and 5 episodes (10 hours) of Marple due to air this year, most of which will run in the Summer. Law & Order UK does 13 episodes per year (and will be shown like that from now on apparently). Champions League takes up 2.5 hours per match too, so these things do actually take up a decent amount of the schedule.