5,000 fantasy schedules which aim to change losing formulas

I've been looking at the overnights recently in full, as you all know, and I've come to realise that the 6pm-7pm slot on weekdays has so much potential...

No longer is it completely dominated by the BBC News at Six, which has plummeted from around 5m to 3-4m. ITV News has also dropped.

I think one of the networks, probably ITV being in the weaker situation at present, should start primetime at 6pm-7pm. It's no secret that ITV has always performed well earlier in the evening with its light entertainment.

What I am proposing is a 6pm slot leading into Emmerdale, which can have shows like this:-

- The Paul O'Grady Show (15 weeks a year)
- Britain's Got More Talent (10 weeks a year)
- Xtra Factor (15 weeks a year)
- Heartbeat (10 weeks a year)

Something like this, spread across a whole year, could provide a massive boost to the whole of primetime, with Emmerdale being boosted, and therefore Coronation Street, with older viewers perhaps skipping The One Show.

This is just a thought, but what does everybody else think of this?

He wouldn't know.

He's just guessing, but he might turn out to have guessed correctly.

Complicated by the fact that ITV has a regulatory obligation to do 30 minutes of local news in primetime between the hours of 6-10.30pm

Sounded like an alright idea to begin with but the more I think about it the more I come to the conclusion that it wouldn't really help. Those shows would struggle to rate as well as the ITV news hour which pulls in around 3m viewers every night and more than that if there's a big story.

All it would achieve is make the BBC News at 6 even stronger and ITV would lose even more ground. Then you'd have a situation like News at Ten where ITV would realise their mistake, try to put it right, but never be able to compete properly at 6pm again.

Sensible really. Of course this is far from ideal for ITV but they are doing the right thing given what has happened and the nature of these episodes.

One thing that does puzzle me though is why they won't just combine the two BGT shows for the remainder of the week. Such a simple solution to prevent a dropoff like we saw last night.

Have the average shares of the news dropped or just the raw ratings?

That was just a piece of promo guff she did for this week's episodes, to ramp up interest.

It's like the "We fillmed x number of endings" guff we hear trotted out by soap producers on a regular basis.

The BBC said on Points of View that the World Cup will take priority over any Murray matches. He'll have to make do with BBC Two most of the time this year.

They moved one EastEnders ep to BBC Two last year, but I'm not convinced they'd do that with any hour-long episodes, cos it the match then finished quickly, they'd be left with half an hour or more of run-of-the-mill tennis on primetime BBC One.

Melrose Place wrapped up with a miserable 15,000 viewers (0.1%) last night on FIVER, according to MG.

That show will not be missed!

ITV could get those rules changed to 5-10.30pm if they wanted.

Wimbeldon, World Cup, some resembence of a normal scheulde, the BBC are in a no win sitution here, someone is going to loose out somewhere.

What about:
18:00 ITV Local News
18:30 ITV News
19:00 BGMT
20:00 Emmerdale
20:30 Coronation Street
21:00 BGT

I suppose ITV could move the evening news to 5.30, since it is the regional news on BBC that gets a 25%+ share and makes it difficult for ITV to compete against with a news programme. This could then open up the 6.30 slot. On bank holidays ITV like to place YBF there so that is an option. Perhaps airing game shows there, stripping shows like House Guest, showing half hour episodes of real deals, or perhaps getting CDWM off Channel4 if they are allowed to could work. One thing I find with the news is it seems more logical to watch the national news and then local news, but because i am not a big BBC news fan, i tend to watch ITV instead anyway

What complete crap ratings. On the "plus side", it was better than 7000 (?) viewers they made a month ago! Some remakes just won't do! BTW, how does Sex and the City repeats perform on FIVER, out of curiosity?

if ITV continues to have problems with Corrie, and cant find slots, could BBC offer to air some, until ITV catches up with itself.

You know out of the kindness of its heart, and to help ITV out of this hole which keeps getting bigger & bigger.

You need to look at shares as well, of course audiences have dropped - after all we are heading into the Summer and there is less of an audience available at that particular time.

ITV held up well in the 9-10pm slot all things considered. Obviously any discussion on whether this week's schedule has worked or not is now void.

Regarding Corrie, how about airing at 9pm Tuesday to Thursday next week, pushing back Father & Son until 9.30pm and the news to 10.30pm. Thus guaranteeing Father & Son has a Corrie lead in every night and ITV dominating the 9pm hour every night.

Plus as the next episode will be at the established 7.30pm Monday slot, everyone will be able to be told, rather than sloting an episode in at random.

The idea of moving the ITV News hour is pointless, a bit random to even be being discussed at the moment. It would just make the BBC stronger and ITV weaker. Would'nt it just be a mirror image of what happened at 10pm?

Waterloo Road wasn't too good but expected. Hopefully more people will wtach next week. I don't know how BGT merits those ratings.

Is this a joke?!

forgive me im sleep deprived

What some have forgotten about the Coronation Street episodes is that, unless ITV heavily edits them, they are not suitable for before the watershed. ITV therefore may have to run Coronation Street at 9pm on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday even if it means Father and Son running at 9:30pm for those days with News at Ten being dumped?

I suspect Channel 4 would not like the above at all, as it sends what looked like 'OK' opposition for Big Brother out the window.

Edit: Apologies, never seen Andy23's post, which suggests similar.

Will be interesting to see if Five 7pm rating goes up tonight. The second half of Live from Studio Five replaced by a news special

^ Why is it not suitable for pre-watershed? Is there strong language in the episodes?


What would replace it on Monday at 19:30 and 20:30?

It's quite obvious next year's knockout Talent shows should be shown from 8-10pm on weeknights. Emmerdale stripped at 7pm, possibly with a Tuesday or Thursday double-lengther, if they're still doing six eps per week by then.

Coronation St on Mon, Wed and Fri at 7.30pm, with two episodes slotted into the previous or following week's schedules to make up for Talent week.

The world won't fall apart if there are two fewer episodes, just for one week.