I think its a big mistake not to put Live Launch on the EPG.

The launch has a huge curiosity value, which is lost if people don't get that its live and its the first show.

Its had a lot of press this year and quite a big ad campaign, I think most people will know its the launch show.

If you don't watch Channel 4, you wouldn't know though.

Oh yeah, well if they go up against an England match they'll get what they deserve TBH, but I think when it's South Frica/Uruguay, I think they'll probably benefit from footie fatigue. .

The #BB11 hashtag on Twitter (yes, I know!) is getting a massive no. of tweets: 700 per minute since 9pm. That's one of the highest counts I've seen for a TV show and I now think it's bound to get 5m+. For reference purposes, earlier in the year the #CBB7 hashtag had about 100/min for the final which got around 4m. The 16-34 rating for tonight's launch will be strong, that's for sure...

It doesn't necessarily have to mean more people are watching though. Just that there's more people commenting / more things that people watching are commenting on.

Hence Twitter being useless for stuff like this.

Shall we do some predictions for the 9pm clash?

Here's mine...

Big Brother - 6m
Junior Apprentice - 4m
Father & Son - 3.5m

According to something I've read today Channel 4 alone reaches over 30m people per week, and these adverts have been running in every ad break for the past fortnight. Pair that with the press going on about it for quite a while, and BB's core fan base, I think its pretty certain that most people who are watching TV will know its the launch show.

Yeah, I know Twitter can be unreliable! But I personally have never seen a show get over 500 tweets per minute (which is massive - even in BB terms) and fail to rate at 5m. There's always a first I suppose

It's not live - it's on a delay of 30-45 minutes due to having to get the crowd out of Elstree by 10pm on days other than Friday. Only if the delay is 15 minutes or less can they get away with saying it's live.


Good launch - though once again everytime BB does a good live show it's ruined by the morons in the crowd. A bit of support would have been nice, at least before the VT is played. A shame though they seemed to hit a few technical snags in the latter stages.

Out of interest, i dont really understand how twitter works, but how can it be getting so many tweets but not be trending as a hashtag?

Certain hashtags (including #BB11) have been banned from entering the Trending Topics list. Not sure why.

At this risk of going of topic, do you happen to know why? it doesnt really make sense to ban it when evidently so many people are talking about it on there.

Also how do you find the stats for hashtags per minute stuff?

The BBC spoilt my favourite show at the moment for me tonight.

Straight from BB over to the Lottery. Ooh and an advert with all the Junior Apprentice finalists on. I was just about to watch that!

Nice bit of complementary scheduling by ITV1 tonight to warm viewers up for the gun seige soap and the nightly-stripped gun crime drama by starting off with a 30 minute tabloid documentary about the mass shootings in Cumbria.

Did they put up the usual promo captions for Corrie as Cumbria: Life After Death was closing, to ensure maximum viewer retention?

Either way, I'm sure this special evening of gun crime to mark the passing of a week since the atrocities will have gone down well in Workington and Whitehaven....

In ratings terms, ouch at the 1.3m drop for Father & Son on The Guns Network, aka ITV1. Emmerdale must have taken quite a hit against EastEnders too to have lost out over the hour.

I reckon ITV's got more tankers than Southampton Docks at the moment...


Has any excitement on here over Tweets ever been borne out by exceptional ratings?

Great launch night, the best since BB7.

You really are despicable aren't you - using the murder of twelve people to vent your hatred of ITV. You couldn't care less about the people of Workington and Whitehaven - you just want to put ITV in a bad light as you enjoy doing on a daily basis - I just never thought though you'd stoop so low.

I agree. I find it far more offensive that Robbie is using that of all things to bash ITV with. Words cannot describe how inappropriate that is.

I can't find the quote: it was something about Twitter wanting to only allow "breaking news" into the trending topics.

Edit: Here it is:

I can understand why stuff like Justin Bieber is banned, but I'd definitely class a TV show currently airing as a "hot emerging topic".


I agree Brekkie. Robbie's not been funny for a while and he's now verging on troll-like behaviour with comments like that. Not even GeorgeS gets involved with the BBC-ITV thing these days!

^ Quoted for the truth.

I like one housemate. The guy with the unibrow. But it's not a bad selection in comparison to other years.

A lot lot better than last year's, at least some of them seem normal.

As a newbie to the thread, it seems like Robbie is playing up to a pre assigned character role of 'ITV basher' and will use anything to do that.

Certainly better than last years - at least there are some people you can identify with. The problem though with revealing the shortlist is there will always be the question "what if?" when it comes to the people they didn't put in.

Yes. I think I was maybe too critical there. There is actually a nice mixture of the usual wannabes and 'normal' people.