Sunday 6th June Overnights
BBC One
20:00- Bafta TV Awards: 4.14m (17.1%)

BBC Two
19:45- Top Gear: Vietnam Special: 1.6m (6.8%)
21:00- An African Journey with Jonathan Dimbleby: 1.42m (5.7%)

ITV1
18:00- Soccer Aid: 5.2m (23.7%)
* including HD: 5.54m (25.2%)
* peak: 8.1m (32%)
* 20:00-22:00: 6.34m (26.2%)
22:15- Piers Morgan’s World Cup South Africa: 1.7m (10%)

Channel 4
19:00- Cameron’s Black Tory: 470,000 (2.2%)
19:55- One Fine Day: 1.29m (5.3%)

Five
20:00- Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: 1.91m (8.2%)

Sky 1
21:00- 24: 616,200 (2.5%)
22:00- 24: 596,200 (3.1%)

I'm sure that will happen - but bloody annoying. No reason at all why the episodes shouldn't just be dropped from the schedule - the BBC have known for years they'd be otherwise occupied during June and July 2010.


In other news the Comedy Awards are moving from ITV to C4. Bit of a pointless buy IMO, and ITV won't exactly miss them - scheduling them has been a nightmare in recent years due to them clashing with the climax of The X Factor.


And glad MIsfits won the drama BAFTA - perhaps C4 will now get around to giving it a second airing. And no disrespect to Misfits or E4, but I think it just highlights what a poor year it was last year for drama on the BBC and ITV.

Five
20:00- Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: 1.91m (8.2%)

Seems like a high rating for Five

that happens for Five every so often, it has a film that rates higher than it really deserves.

Five's Sunday night movies have been rating well for ages, although last night's did especially well.

I don't know why Five don't merge Five US with Fiver and launch a movie channel.

Very good for Soccer Aid. It's a particularly impressive peak but the overall show must've been held back somewhat by the mammoth running time. I'm sure it'll be back, though obviously it works better in the even years when major international tournaments are looming.

Decent for the BAFTA's, but they're always pretty bland shows.

Very good rating for Soccer Aid-about 1 million higher than I expected considering the 90 minute build up. ITV do seem to be more focused on securing a strong rating over a longer period, rather than huge ratings for short broadcasts. Other examples include DOI and BGT-someone yesterday excellently pointed out that An Audience With Dizzee/Usher would not have received the 11m that watched them in the half hour waiting for BGT results, and although BGT was down, it probably makes more commercial sense for ITV to do this.

Decent rating for the BAFTAS aswell all things considered, but it did seem to be more mainstream this year.

Pretty poor night for BBC2 and CH4. I would have thought African Adventure would have been doing much better than it is doing. CH4 just airing fillers before BB starts and they couldn't really show CDWM, considering there are 2 specials propping BB up next week.

Strong day for FIVE with all hours shares above 6% and Robin Hood delivering a strong audience over nearly 3 hours.

Not surprised about the Comedy Awards news and no real loss for ITV. Might actually do decent business for CH4 with a solid ~2m.

Merging FIVE:US and FIVER would be a great move imo. Both channels have very strong shows, but too many slots to fill which they end up filling with more and more repeats, which there enough slots on FIVE for! Also they are exhausting the repeats for the CSI franchise, and people seem to be tiring of this.

The channel would see one repeat of each of the US dramas, a film night, H&A/Neighbours, one repeat of FIVE's factual stuff and a night for new homegrown stuff.

With Cleveland done, E4 are trying something different after Glee this evening. I wonder how it will perform?

Britain's Got Talent had a 5 minute peak of 15.0m (60%) according to The Guardian, including HD.
Eastenders currently holds the highest 5 min peak of the year with 16.58m (59.4%).

I think England vs USA on Saturday should be able to overtake those peaks.

RHPOT has always been a big hitter-it was shown many many times on BBC1 and always performed reasonably. Its just one of those films that people like to watch over and over again.

Yeah that's what I think. At the moment Five's best content is spread too thinly across the two networks and so they end up with two sort of average performing networks. They would be much better off merging the two, so they can offer a much stronger service and a better performing network to rival the likes of ITV2 and E4.

Plus I've never liked the name FIVER. Because "Five" is difficult to incorporate into a channel name without sounding daft, I would probably be bold and call it something completely different, similar to what UKTV have done with their channels. Maybe something like 2C. (to see) Yes, that's pretty daft as well, but at least it's catchy.

Perhaps it is to the UK what Pretty Woman is to Spain.

There are some daft names and Fiver was the name of a rabbit in Watership Down - thats what comes into my head when I see the name.

I had no idea it was so Iv Googled it-lo and behold there was a thread on it-strange how many times a DS thread pops up when Googling stuff.

LOL I was reading that this morning, hence the reference. Amazing how well it rates for a movie so old that has been shown a dozen or so times already.

Re: the comedy awards moving to Channel 4.

Could this be part of a bigger strategy at C4 to woo back Ross?

Can you believe the nerve of $ky?

They are conducting a survey at the moment to try and gauge the potential popularity of a new $ky service without a dish. Sound familiar?

Anyway, one of the questions asks...

"We would like you to assume that ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, E4 and More4 are only available via a pay TV subscription and are no longer available free of charge from Freeview..."

This sentence nearly made my blood boil. They are getting so ahead of themselves here. ITV2, ITV3 and E4 are very successful FTA services. Apart from the obvious, why on earth do $ky think they would defect to pay when that model was not working for the likes of E4 previously?

I hope Channel 4 and ITV react angrily to these seemingly baseless suggestions. C4 have underlined a serious commitment to FTA with further investment in new channels like 4Music and C4+1. ITV have already ruled out taking the likes of ITV2 pay in a recent interview with the new boss. Furthermore, both broadcasters have a mutual interest in Freesat as well as Freeview. I would suggest removing most of their services from these platforms would be a case of cutting off the nose to spite the face!

It has to be said though we are entering a very serious time for the future of commercial television in the UK. Five is up for sale, $ky have already nabbed the Virgin channels and now we are staring down the barrel at a serious attempt by BSkyB to just about finish off quality free-to-air commercial television in this country altogether bar ITV1 and Channel 4. All this because Ofcom have failed in their fundamental duty to promote competition and protect consumers by allowing BSkyB to become too dominant a force in the UK TV industry and the ramifications of this could be huge.

Full details and screenshots over at TrustedReviews.

they can have ITV 2, 3 & 4, its E4 & More4 I want.

Fantastic news that the Comedy Awards are going to Channel 4. Hopefully C4 will show it some respect and allow it to be edgy and controversial like it was a few years ago unlike the watered down crap that ITV have shown.

Very good for Soccer Aid also. One of the most enjoyable TV events of the year for me.

Oh get a grip. ITV have publicly flirted with moving their multi chanel services to a sub based model. it wont happen with the current content, but in the medium term it could well happen.


that is not Ofcoms remit at all. That is the role of the Competition Authority which is a completely different body. And it is difficult to see how taking ITV2,3, 4 off Freeview could be seen as anti-competitive. If there is demand for the slots from other FTA digital channels, they will buy the empty slots. If there isn't, they wont.

Whilst the ITV digital channels are not to my personal taste most of the time, I do watch them occasionally (Hell's Kitchen USA, Tour De France) and I know others really appreciate them, so I would not like to see them leave Freeview, least not because it would signal BSkyB getting its own way on something else.

It's like watching something horrific slowly unfold before your eyes but you are powerless to do anything about it.

I've tried, of course. I was one of many that took the time to respond to Ofcom's consultation regarding $ky's Picnic proposal. I was also one of many that's views were completely ignored. And instead, Ofcom decided to impose some flimsy regulation on the wholesale pricing of $ky channels, while simultaneously attempting to appease $ky by allowing Picnic, who had the cheek to mount a legal challenge despite the soft nature of Ofcom's ruling.

Anyway, one other nugget from this survey, one of the channels said to be included in such a service is Sky Sports News. It would appear this channel's days free-to-air are numbered. Since it's essentially a 24 hour advert for Sky Sports that doesn't even have the decency to broadcast in widescreen, I can't see this shifting many subs somehow...

Archie Norman, March 2010:

"We have no product suitable for a pay platform right now. Speculation we might take ITV2, 3 or 4 onto a pay TV platform is not realistic. Were we to develop a proposition in the pay [TV] market we would need a very different product than we have at this time."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010...-archie-norman


Ofcom's Statutory Duties
Under the Communications Act 2003:

" 3(1) It shall be the principal duty of Ofcom, in carrying out their functions;
(a) to further the interests of citizens in relation to communications matters; and
(b) to further the interests of consumers in relevant markets, where appropriate by promoting competition"

Source http://www.ofcom.org.uk/about/sdrp/

If ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 were to go pay, should Picnic exist by then, there wouldn't be any "empty slots" on Freeview. ITV would simply use the existing capacity and put a big fat encryption on it.

I assume when it goes HD later in the year the SD version will go 16:9.

Some more ratings from last night.

BBC One
18:00- Halcyon River Diaries: 3.62m (20.2%)
19:00- Countryfile: 5.07m (23.6%)
* HD: 71,000 (0.3%)

BBC Two
18:55- Richard Hammond's Engineering Connections: 1.38m (6.6%)

Five
19:15- Cricket on Five: 831,000 (3.8%)

BBC Three
19:00- Doctor Who: 516,000 (2.4%)
21:00- Wags, Kids and World Cup Dreams: 288,000 (1.2%)
22:00- Family Guy: 732,000 (3.3%)
22:20- Family Guy: 942,000 (5%)

BBC Four
21:00- Hammond meets Moss: 284,000 (1.1%)

E4
22:00- Desperate Housewives: 497,000 (2.6%)

ITV2
18:30- Britain's Got Talent: 495,000 (2.3%)
21:00- Britain's Got More Talent: 167,000 (0.7%)

ITV3
20:00- Midsomer Murders: 1.26m (5.2%)
* up 316% from slot average
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Countryfile did well yesterday. It does seem to suit the early peaktime slot better. Also, a very impressive rating for the Midsomer Murders repeat on ITV3. Only EastEnders is capable of those sorts of multchannel figures for repeats!