Britain's Got Dancers was weak tonight. I hope the performance show is down as well because it deserves to be.

I completly disagree - I thought tonight's BGT was the best semi-final of the week with 3 or 4 acts worthy of the final. Wish they'd show Janey some respect though and judge her talent and not her age - Tyler, Twist + Pulse and The Fusion were all better than her tonight.


Firstly, Paul O'Grady wouldn't do it - and secondly, I'm 90% certain over 5-7pm ITV's average audience would be down. Get the audience at 5pm and they keep them for the news (and Emmerdale) - put the news at 5pm (regional news especially) and the audience will go elsewhere and may not return for the evening.


That got it a second series - but won't get it a third. If it was around the million mark it might have a chance, but 600,000 isn't cutting it at all.

It was weak tonight.

Far too many dance acts this series.

The Fusion were probably the best of a bad bunch. At least they had a bit of a theme / story going on.

Don't know why everyone raves about Twist and Pulse. Audition was OK but they've outstayed their welcome on my TV screen now.

My predictions:

BGT 7.30pm 9.4m (9.8m including HD)
Harry Hill RPT 5.6m
BGT 9.30pm 8.2m (8.5m including HD)

I like Twist & Pulse - they make me laugh anyway. The Fusion were certainly the best of these dance troupes they keep inflicting on us though.

ETA The results show is such a drag to watch though - ITV really scored an own goal this year. It's just recap, filler, recap, guest, filler, padding, results. Hardly warrants its own 30 minute show.

They can't really do much though if so many dance groups apply though, can they?

Which of course they would do, as they all want a piece of what Diversity have.

Wouldn't it be best if all the broadcasters had their news between 18:00 and 19:00? This way they can all focus on lead ins and lead outs and the quality of their news (to avoid people channel hopping) rather that what happens now.

So:
BBC
17:00 Teen Programming
18:00 BBC Local News/BBC News at Six
18:30 BBC World News Today or BBC Evening News(Similar to the US)/BBC Local News
19:00 etc...

ITV
17:00 BGMT
18:00 ITV Local News
18:30 ITV News
19:00 etc...

4
17:00 Maybe The Simpsons, Come Dine With Me or The Coach Trip
17:30 Hollyoaks
18:00 Channel 4 News
19:00 Maybe The Simpsons, Come Dine With Me or The Coach Trip
19:30 Maybe The Simpsons, Come Dine With Me or The Coach Trip
20:00 etc...

FIVE
17:00 Home and Away
17:30 Neighbours
18:00 FIVE News/Live From Studio FIVE
19:00 etc...

Someone should post a graph of how overall viewing audience increases sharply from 5pm to 7pm.

If regional news was going to be moved to 5pm, you might as well move it to 4pm, 3pm or drop it altogether. I watch Calendar at 6pm every night. I wouldn't watch it at 5pm as I'm still on my way home from work. Like most people are, so I'd be watching Look North, hence they would lose me as a viewer at this time.

ITN wouldn't really enjoy competing with itself every night at 6pm. Channel 4 News is the best news programme on TV but it would suffer there.

I saw a bit of BGT tonight-Fusion were pretty good I thought but I dont get Janey. Tremendous guts to go on stage but she didnt sound good to me and the outpouring of gush from the judges was more about age and wanting her in the final than anything else.
At the end of the day though-well done her!

Ratings are down a bit-because the Janey effect isnt like the Boyle effect but its a rare thing when posts on here suggest that there might be a bit of disappointment with ratings of 10 million.

NB The man woman act was simply dreadful imo.

I think the evening news situation is fine as it is, I don't see any need for them all to broadcast at the same time. And the last thing ITV (or the BBC for that matter) need is more "primetime" hours to fill by moving the news earlier. Right now, all they need to work on is one hour a night (9pm) and they're not really doing much with that as it is. Long term I'd sooner see them move the late news to 11pm and have the 10pm hour for more primetime programming. But I doubt that will ever happen.


And it's a recap that comes right at the start when the previous show ends on one as well just 30 minutes earlier. Alicia, Pixie and Miley have all been quite responsive on the results so A&D are able to waste some time on chatting with them. The judges are deliberating for longer as well and I'm not a big fan of those contestant pleading packages.

Also funny how the extended performance show means that despite now being through 4 semi-finals, nobody has yet got 3 buzzers because they would be left with time to fill!

I agree. I don't know why the semi finals are swinging from the sublime to the ridiculous (tomorrow looks like a better line up again) when they could be reasonable throughout.

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ITV really have been screwed by the sad event in Cumbria, but I feel they've made the right decision. They should've combined the two Britain's Got Talent's show, though - mind you, it's possible that tonight the split show could rate ok due to lack of competition.

Junior Apprentice benefited from the schedule change last night, otherwise I think it could have dipped to Waterllo Road level.

There has been a lot of debate about how the schedule changes have hurt ITV, so I thought I'd compare ITV primetime (7-10) last year to this year to see if they have benefitted in raw numbers. I have taken only Monday and Tuesday's figures, as obviously yesterday was affected and there was no Sunday show this time round.

Monday 2009: average 8.18m
7.00 Emmerdale: 6.4m
7.30 Coronation Street: 8.4m
8.00 Airline: 3.4m
8.30 Coronation Street: 9.1m
9.00 Britain's Got Talent: 13.6m

Britain's Got Talent aired until 10.30pm

Monday 2010: average 8.62m
7.00 Coronation Street: 7.8m
7.30 Britain's Got Talent: 10.7m
9.00 Coronation Street: 10.2m
9.30 Britain's Got Talent: 10.3m
10.00 ITV News at Ten: 4.1m

Tuesday 2009: average 8.76m
7.00 Emmerdale: 6.1m
8.00 Coronation Street: 7.4m
8.30 Britain's Got Talent: 12.8m

Tuesday 2010: average 9.28m
7.00 Emmerdale: 6.9m
7.30 Britain's Got Talent: 10.3m
9.00 Coronation Street: 9.9m
9.30 Britain's Got Talent: 10.0m

So while there's a lot of criticism, ITV saw an average increase in raw viewers on both nights when the schedule was aired: by 0.44m on Monday and by 0.52m on Tuesday - maybe not a rise on the scale they wanted but still more than healthy despite the criticism.

Yeah, but that's because of the increased length of BGT from 90 minutes last year to 2 hours this year. The main part of the schedule change (starting BGT at 19:30 and having a separate results show) hasn't really worked. I think they would've got a higher primetime average having BGT 2 hours long from 8pm/8.30pm.

Also, ITV classes primetime as 19:00-22:30. By that definition, they're down compared to last year.

Yep

Monday 2010 Primetime share-33.6% last year 38.9%

Tuesday 2010 Primetime share-33% last year 38.1%


Raw figures analaysis isnt comparable due to the new Barb system which now shows more Total viewers than last year.

It's a bit unfair to say that they're down in the final half hour, considering News at Ten got such a boost last year from the Su-Bo phenomenon, plus the show has gone through a seemingly unpopular revamp between May 2009 and June 2010.

If Coronation Street had been left in the 7.30pm slot that would've been dented up against EastEnders. I do agree with you that Britain's Got Talent would've done better as an all in one, but they wanted to use it to boost Coronation Street and that was working without the night suffering. Next year they'll have a rethink, but I don't think it was such a bad move from ITV as some have made out.

Is that 7-10 or 7-10.30, because I don't think News at Ten's ratings can really be counted from last year to this.

No - but the 7-10pm average you've used only includes one hour of BGT for the Monday episode last year, as BGT ran to 10:30pm. The 7-10pm average for the Monday episode just gone included 2 hours of BGT. So clearly, with double the duration of BGT in that time period, ITV would be up compared to last year for 7-10pm. That's why I think 10-10:30pm should be taken into consideration, especially when comparing the Monday episodes.


Put it this way: on the Monday in 2009, Corrie averaged 8.8m for its two episodes. The Monday just gone, Corrie averaged 9.0m. So a boost of about 0.2m. BGT on the other hand fell by about 3m. A fall was inevitable but a 3m/22% decline is quite big, when you consider most audition shows fell by around 10%.

Tuesday's episode of Corrie was nicely up compared to last year, but it's balanced out by the decline BGT faced. Not really worth it IMO.

Next year I would go back to 90 minute shows personally. As Fudd has just proven, the extra 30 minutes of BGT hasn't had that much of an impact considering. They could use the freed up time to launch new shows instead. Here's what I would do:

Bank Holiday Monday
1900 Emmerdale
1930 Coronation Street
2000 Britain's Got Talent
2130 UK Drama Pilot (to be continued Mondays 2100)
2230 News and Weather

Tuesday
1900 Emmerdale
2000 Coronation Street
2030 Britain's Got Talent
2200 News at Ten and Weather

Wednesday
1900 Emmerdale
1930 Coronation Street
2000 Coronation Street
2030 Britain's Got Talent
2200 News at Ten and Weather

Thursday
1900 Emmerdale
2000 Coronation Street
2030 Britain's Got Talent
2200 News at Ten and Weather

Friday
1900 Emmerdale
1930 Coronation Street
2000 Britain's Got Talent
2130 UK Sitcom Pilot (to be continued Thursdays 2100)
2200 News at Ten and Weather

Saturday
1900 Britain's Got Talent: The Final
2100 US Pilot (to be continued ITV2 Sundays 2100)
2200 Britain's Got Talent: Winner Announced
2215 UK Sitcom Pilot (repeat from Fri)
2245 News and Weather

It wouldn't be physically possible, as the same people make both shows.

I included the full running time of BGT last year; hence I included News at Ten's ratings this year to balance it out.


The early start for Coronation Street dented it by 0.6m on Monday - for me that was a silly move. They should've stuck to Emmerdale at 7pm and just ran five episodes of Coronation Street across the week.

However, the 9pm episode is up by 1.1m on last year. On Tuesday, there was an increase of 2.5m, while Britain's Got Talent was down by the identical amount.

I had forgotten about BARB rating differently, so apologies for that. I just think ITV's main aim was to boost Coronation Street while conquering the night and they had managed that. They would've expected a dip for Britain's Got Talent but that would be balanced out by the extra half hour. They've also managed to keep Coronation Street and Emmerdale away from EastEnders throughout the week. I just don't think some of the criticism is fair considering that year on year the change has been minimal and no doubt the amount of money received increased (or should've been, but the unfortunate events of this week may have effected that).

It depends on ITV's financial sitaution. If they can afford to risk half hour, then they should definitely risk it and see what happens. But they have attempted to launch stuff off the back of Britain's Got Talent before (Mumbai Calling/The Prisoner/The Colour of Money) and it's all failed miserably. Briatin's Got Talent Week is their major week for revenue, and I think at the moment the current schedule squeezes every penny that's possible for the broadcaster.

Saying that I don't think it's the right schedule - just the most logical from an economic viewpoint.

Ah right, sorry I got confused and thought you were averaging just 7-10pm! So then, even when you average out 7-10:30pm for the two Mondays, the averages end up as:

Monday '09: 9.7m
Monday '10: 9.2m

A drop of 0.5m this year despite BGT being half an hour longer this year and no filler such as Airline.


I agree that ITV went into this week to try and give Corrie a good boost, and it did that for the 9pm episodes. They rated well. But I think it was to the detriment of BGT, with the talent show down even more than it would've been had it aired at 8pm/8:30pm/9pm! I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one, otherwise we'll be going round in circles again and again !

ITV have more freedom with BGT next year because Cowell won't be on American Idol. So they can bring it out of the May heat and run it in April. I'd like to see them run auditions on Saturdays & Sundays for 3 weeks then have the live shows. The Sunday shows can be used as a lead-in for a new drama which would run through May as well.

Ideally I'd cut back to 90 minutes for the live shows, perhaps using it to introduce new shows like Dancc suggests. Also, never start before 8pm and if they really insist on making it 2 hours, don't split the shows. Ideally, I'd prefer to see it back to the schedule of 2008 (Mon & Fri running 9pm to 10.30pm thus not displacing Corrie).

If NaT has to move to accomodate BGT or a new show, then so be it.