Japan. Away. Sunday afternoon.

http://www.radiotimes.com/ListingsSe...s_fullpage.jsp

K

Thanks

Ooh, bit controversial from you! I hope you've got your bulletproofs on posting a comment like that here.

Glee is certainly becoming a bit underwhelming ratings wise after all that promise early in the season. Like most shows coming out of America, it just can't sustain the initial interest. The midseason break really didn't help, and from what I've read, the quality has nosedived a bit too.

Obviously its ratings are still fantastic for multi-channel, but the C4 repeat might be in trouble.

And its on at the same time as the Formula 1 Live Turkish Grand Prix on BBC1, which will dent both no doubt.

The last friendly was up against Five Days which got 6m and that was against the whole of the second half, I would say that was just as strong competion as 30 mins of Eastenders. Also, last night's game only had High Street Dreams against it in the 9pm hour.

Glee has definately lost a bit of direction since it's return - and it certainly worked better as brightening up a dull Monday winter-evening than it does in the summer - indeed it could arguably benefit from being pushed back to 10pm for it's spring outing.

I think though if Glee settles at around the million mark E4 will be more than happy with it - it's by far their most successful import at the moment.

I suppose you've got a good point there. However yesterday's match didn't rate too badly compared to what would usually be expected of a pre-World Cup primetime friendly. Before the 2006 World Cup, BBC1 aired England vs. Hungary and the actual match averaged 9.5m. Last night's actual match averaged 8.3m (could be more including HD), so it's a drop of about 13%.

A 13% drop compared to 4 years ago isn't too big considering viewing habits have altered in that time with many more people having access to Freeview/Sky. And also, of course we all know ITV's figures for matches are generally lower the BBC's anyway. So the sort of rating it got yesterday doesn't come as a surprise to me.

Glee, still the funniest show on telly for me, not surprised it's ratings have declined over here, I was surprised it was a hit at all, TBH. Still massive in the States, third series already commissioned, and has the Superbowl lead in. Far from rubbish, IMHO, hilarious in fact.

Not quite sure what to think about Lost's rating, and it makes me question some overnights, and actually a general question.

Should overnights be:

a) the amount of people who watched a programme at the specific time it was broadcast
b) the amount of people who watched a programme at the specific time it was broadcast and whoever watched it within an X amount of period after the broadcast.

As we've seen with Lost, I'm not quite sure which I'd prefer as both give quite significantly different figures.

I'd prefer to see raw figures of who watched a programme at the specific time when it was broadcast, surely that's the purpose of these things? Let's take the following two programmes which clash on a specific night:

Programme 1: 4.54m (Live + Timeshift)
Programme 2: 4.47m (Live + Timeshift)

OK, I admit that's unlikely, but let's say the majority of people watched Programme 2 live, whereas 'most' watched Programme 2 timeshifted. The overnights we see above, we'd be saying Programme 1 beat Programme 2 head-to-head, because it did. But, what if they timeshifted, in such that:

Programme 1: 0.35m timeshifted viewers
Programme 2: 0.24m timeshifted viewers

Then you'd get:

Programme 1: 4.19m (Live)
Programme 2: 4.23m (Live)

Which shows Programme 2 won and beat Programme 1 head-to-head at 9pm.

Maybe I'm being pedantic, but I'd prefer to see the raw overnights (who won what at a specific time) rather than something which takes into account who watched EastEnders at 11:35pm or This Morning at 6:20pm in the evening.

For a night like last night, you might have had:

- EastEnders viewers recording EastEnders to watch at 21:30 after the footy
- Football viewers recording the first half, joining 'in' 15-minutes later, skipping the half-time analysis (i.e. timeshifting the first half) and joining in sync as a live viewer for the start of the second-half.

However, the figures for last night might not reflect that.

I think I'll end this post with the appropriate smiley.

Problem comes with capturing those clever people that, esp for commercial channels, use "chase play" or someone that starts watching something live, then they pause it for 30 secs cos the phone rings. Are they watching it "live" or not?

K

Well if you pause it, then you turn into a timeshifter, because you're not watching live anymore, unless you then speed it up to get back into sync...

I guess what I was trying to say was what happens sometimes with us, where I'm actually watching live but via a programme that my Toppy is currently buffering/recording. Could the BARB box (if I was on the panel!) distinguish between that and watching the same show, delayed by, say 30s?

K

So many grey areas, but I guess the status quo is fair. If people choose to record programme A over programme B, is it fair to say programme A is less popular even though people opt to watch it within a couple of hours.

All quite interesting though and raises far too many questions to answer. Do the five-minute breakdowns for example account for timeshift - and hence are the drops we see during ad breaks just down to people leaving the room or are they factoring in people watching timeshifted and skipping the ads?

They would do, because if they didn't, then the 5-minute breakdowns would produce a lower overall audience compared to live + timeshift audience, which it doesn't, it produces exactly the same.

Yes it is interesting because Sky 1 have only managed ad exposure to 69,000 people not 635,000 as the overnights would suggest. Just because viewers have recorded and watched before 2am the same day they are counted in the overnights as having viewed it live.

I would imagine that potential advertisers would look at the "Live" aspect not the overnights that we see then. Im sure it goes some way to explain some of the odd axings & re-commissions from ITV over the years.

Father and Son has been confirmed by ITV Press Office as over 4 nights. However, there is something extremely confusing...

http://www.itv.com/presscentre/brita...l/default.html

Britain's Got Talent
Saturday, 5 June 2010, 8:00PM - 9:30PM

I've only just noticed that on there today... but it surely cannot be right? Why mess with a format that's worked very successfully for the past 2 years? Must be a mistake. The provisional schedules had it down as 8pm to 9:30pm, but I didn't think that'd turn out to be confirmed?!

(for reference, The Whole 19 Yards is listed in the provisionals at 7pm, not sure what ITV are playing at)

I was expecting at least 2 hours for the main show and 30 minutes for the results.

Unlike X Factor they actually have a lot to get through on the BGT Final.

I think that info is probably going to change a lot in the next day or so. BGT will probably be similar to last year: a ~2 hour performance show and 30 minute result.

Hopefully dubsj will be able to give us some info today about the schedules!

That time is still provisional and won't be confirmed until tomorrow (or tonight if dubsj posts anything), and I doubt that 8-9.30pm has ever been the plan. I think it'll be something similar to last year, with maybe a slightly longer performances show.

F1 coverage probably sees its figures artificially boosted a lot by same-day timeshifting as well, especially for those early races.

Ouch! (Sorry, Andy. )

Good little piece about this by the Radio Times editor this week:

Now that MG and Digital-I have fully updated:

Monday 24th May 2010
BBC One
13:45 - Doctors: 1.26m (20.9%)
19:30 - RHS Chelsea Flower Show: 4.44m (23.1%)
20:00 - EastEnders: 6.49m (28.5%)
* beat Coronation Street by 1,000
21:00 - High Street Dreams: 1.90m (7.8%)
* HD: 10,000 (0.0%)
22:35 - The Graham Norton Show: 2.28m (16.3%)
* HD: 2,000 (0.0%)

BBC Two
20:00 - RHS Chelsea Flower Show: 2.70m (11.8%)
21:00 - Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story: 1.2m

ITV1
17:00 - The Chase: 1.2m (11.4%)
19:00 - Coronation Street: 6.49m (35.0%)
* 19:00 to 19:25 - 6.72m (36.3%)
* HD: 180,000 (1.0%)
19:30 - International Football: 7.15m (31.6%)
* rounds up to 7.2m
* match average: 8.64m (37.1%)
* 15-minute peak: 8.7m
* 5-minute peak: 8.9m
* HD: 459,000 (2.0%)
* ITV HD record

Channel 4
19:30 - Hollyoaks: 1.24m (7.4%)
* highest figure since April 26th
* +1: 184,000 (1.0%)
20:00 - The Curse of the Hope Diamond: 1.16m (5.1%)
* +1: 156,000 (0.6%)
21:00 - Celebrity Come Dine with Me: 2.31m (9.5%)
* +1: 258,000 (1.4%)
22:00 - The Million Pound Drop Live: 1.95m (10.8%)
* rounds down to 1.9m
* +1: 204,000 (2.2%)

Five
17:30 - Neighbours: 1.17m (10.4%)
18:00 - Home and Away: 945,000 (6.3%)
20:00 - The Gadget Show: 588,000 (2.6%)
21:00 - FlashForward: 1.22m (5.0%)

BBC Three
20:30 - The Wags' Stories: 301,00 (1.3%)
22:00 - EastEnders: 1.08m (5.2%)
22:30 - Bizarre ER: 498,000 (3.1%)

BBC Four
21:00 - Opera Italia: 277,000 (1.1%)
22:00 - Storyville: 96,000 (0.6%)

ITV3
21:00 - Midsomer Murders: 862,000 (4.1%)

E4
19:00 - Hollyoaks: 532,000 (2.9%)
21:00 - Glee: 1.06m (4.4%)
22:00 - The Cleveland Show: 368,000 (1.8%)
22:30 - King of the Hill: 97,000 (0.6%)

Fiver
18:30 - Home and Away: 442,000 (2.6%)
19:00 - Neighbours: 196,000 (1.1%)

Sky1
05:00 - Lost: 68,000 (live)
* including timeshifters: 643,000 (28.2%)
22:00 - NCIS: Los Angeles: 213,000 (1.2%)

Sky Movie Premiere
21:00 - The Pacific: 155,000

Living
21:00 - Four Weddings: 169,000 (0.7%)

The football numbers seem better including HD, brilliant figure for ITV, and something to consider next week - the figures for BGT may look poor on ITV1, but if 0.5m watch on HD, then they could be good.

Extremely poor for The Gadget Show.

As for The Million Pound Drop, I think the format works, but you need 'serious' contestants for it to work in my view.

Anyone know what the highest overnight rating record for the BBC HD channel is? I've searched but can't find it anywhere. According to MG:


That's very impressive. It could be the highest overnight rating for an HD programme ever, depending on what BBC HD's top overnight is.

DW has got just a gnat's doodah under 500k, IIRC, on the officials. Dunno about overnights though.

K

The Gadget Show was a best of, clip show