I did know it wasn't on tonight but my first attempt at a joke was not good enough.

DS Soaps has updated:

BBC1
Doctors - 1.25m (23.1%)
* ties with lowest rating of year so far
* above average Friday share level

Five
Neighbours - 1.07m (10.1%)
* 3rd lowest rating of year so far
* ties with highest Friday share of the year so far
Home And Away - 702k (5.2%)
* lowest rating since April 5th

Channel 4
Hollyoaks - 861k (5.8%)
* highest Friday rating since April 9th
* joint 3rd highest Friday share of the year

E4
Hollyoaks - 459k (2.9%)

BBC3
Eastenders - 835k (4.3%)

Fiver
Home And Away - 377k (2.6%)
Neighbours - 204k (1.3%)

ITV2
Corrie - 242k (2.8%)
Corrie - 314k (5.1%)
Emmerdale - 116k (4.3%)

"Decent reviews" - I don't remember any.

To be fair Moving Wallpaper was screwed over by the return of News at Ten and therefore the promotion of Echo Beach to ITV1. If the original plan of airing Moving Wallpaper on ITV1 and Echo Beach on ITV2 had gone ahead it might have faired slightly better - but still ITV gave Moving Wallpaper another shot only for the axe to inevitable fall next time around.

Better shows at the time with better ratings were not so lucky - for example Duel - which rated better, saw ratings grow and was reviewed very favourably - got axed after one outing.


It's difficult because it's kind of like a chicken and the egg situation - should ITV always be axing under performing shows in a quest to find the shows which can bring in 6m+, or do they just have to accept that at the moment mediocre ratings of 4m is about as much as they can expect.

Four-part drama Father & Son will start on Monday 7th June on ITV1 according to the provisional schedules. Looks like it'll be stripped across the week so it isn't interrupted by the World Cup.

Hmm, I thought it was quite good, the concept was very original, and would've done well if kept in the Thursday 9pm-10pm slot.

However, the Friday 9pm-10pm slot is not for that target 18-24 demographic...that's why it plummeted from a very respectable 5m (for such a niche programme) to 3.2m - and yeah - the figures kept falling...

Are you quite sure about that? I wouldn't put it past the dimwits at ITV to schedule it weekly.

"Father & Son returns in three weeks time - or four depending on which second round matches we decide to show."

7 million for Coronation St, this must be a record low for the soap. Perhaps ITV should wake up an realise all these extra episodes and omnibuses are boring viewers to tears. A lot of people who were loyal viewers have deserted it now due to the hopeless acting, the overkill with episodes and predictable plots. If dear old Corrie starts to fall off permanently and the public loses its taste for Cowell's shows, which will happen, then ITV only have themselves to blame as they have jettisoned whole genres of programmes in favour of reality, which is a dying genre now, soaps and talent contests.

Moving Wallpaper is one of the best things ITV made in years, Echo Beach on the other hand, was some of the worst TV in the history of TV.

and does anyone here think that Corrie is in real trouble?

Hollyoaks yes, but Corrie no.

Corrie has fallen below 7m twice already this year, so no its not a record low. I don't know what the record low is but its much lower than 6 million. Also, whilst it did have poor ratings yesterday due to the weather, yesterday was also its highest (full slot) Friday share since 12th February.

Coronation St isn't dead yet, but I think the overkill with episodes is turning people away. I think ITV should go back to three episodes to improve the scripts. However, audience figures halving in ten years must be quite worrying, although one possible cause is the soap's older viewers dying off and not being replaced.
As for Wallyoaks, well it is a niche thing on a minority channel and I think Channel 4 would be more concerned about how well it does among its core audience of under 25s than how many millions it attracts.

Is this one of those things, which actually could rate well?

Because if so, then it could win its slot for the 4 days given that the BBC competition will probably be poor.

It's had excellent reviews, a good cast and won awards in other countries which it has already aired in (it's a co-production with RTE in Ireland). But it looks quite bleak and is about gangwars, guncrime etc which is the type of drama which often doesn't rate well.


Corrie's official ratings are up 3% compared to last year, so I very much doubt ITV will cut down the no. of episodes from 5 to 3!

Surprised ITV are doing that actually, because isn't it quite a good drama that would do really well spread out for four weeks? That said I'm glad it is being scheduled like that, because all there would have been for that week is fillers and repeats, so it could do quite well up against weak BBC1 opposition.

Why does nobody here realise that viewing figures we're low because it was hot? The shares were near identical to previous weeks, infact Neighbours improved its shared whilst dipping in figures. When Corrie, ED etc are getting 6 million but only a 20% share that will be a problem.

More worrying for Five is the fate of one of its crown jewels, Home and Away, falling to 700,000 viewers. I often wonder if this might get the axe when the contract renewal time comes as even for Five, this is bad. Such a change from 20 years ago when it attracted 15 million viewers and was always in the ratings top 10.

worth noting that Home & Away adds 377,000* on Fiver with the new episode, unlike Neighbours.

Five also has worst performances, Live From Studio Five & anything staring Justin Lee Collins.

*not sure what the normal rating is

I think it's pretty obvious the drop to 700k was weather related, but still, don't let that get in the way of a cheap shot.

According to the latest BARB officials it is getting around 1.4-1.6m per episode including FIVER which is actually very good.

Still not good as a few years ago Home and Away was attracting 1.8 million viewers at 6.00. However, you could argue the soap has been in a slow decline since it peaked at 15.4 million in 1990. By 1995 this figure had halved and by 2000, when ITV ditched it, ratings had halved again. I don't know anyone who watches it and I'm sure even among the teen and young adult audience it was created for it's not doing well.

Yes lets compare H&A from the 90's when there was only a handful of channels and its ratings were always combined to yesterday, a day when everything was down anyway.

I dont watch H&A so I dont know whats going on with it, but TBH your posts do seem to be "all the soaps are doomed"

Well now I'm absolutely convinced.

It is clearly deeply unpopular and must be axed immediately.

Quick, extend Live From Studio Five by half an hour to fill the gap!

I do, as do quite a few of the women at work

You cannot argue that because a show has lost ratings over 20 years it is in trouble.

Every show that would have run that long will have done. Its just that mostly soaps have that kind of longevity.

In the mid 1990s I worked on an ITV series called Strange But True? and we got up to 12.5 ,million viewers for some of the better rated episodes. Those are figures such a series could never achieve in a million years of trying now.

We were axed after several series when it fell to around 6/7 million - a total that ITV would kill for a decade or so later.

Many factors have contributed to the decline of viewing figures but soaps show them most obviously because they have been around across a long time during the biggest drops year to year on record.

Home & Away isn't in trouble at all.

That 0.7m was one of the lowest this year, which was also the case for the big three yesterday.

The show reguarly pulls in 0.5m+ for the Fiver first look showings toping the FIver charts every single week boosting their primetime performance.

The lunchtime screening reguarly pulls between 0.3-0.5m in line with FIVE's average for that time.

The 6pm showing averages around 1m and for 99% of the time the share is above 5% which is above the FIVE average.

I'm not too sure on how much FIVE pay for this. but it's an import and an Australian one, so not much I would have thought.

The show fills hours of FIVE's schedule each week which they would struggle to replace with something else and it boosts Neighbours creating the Australian soap hour.

All showings added together the show still pulls in 2m viewers which is pretty much what episodes were getting before Fiver existed.

The soaps shares for yesterday are fine, but the rating's are showing a summer wane. Coronation Street should at least improve ratigns wise with being the meat in the Britain's Got Talent sandwich in a couple of weeks. Ashes to Ashes did excellently.

Doctor Who only reached 3 pages in the episode thread tonight - I know that's as much of a guide as Twitter but it seems very low. I'm guessing the weather could be having an impact there.