One thing that I really dont understand is ITV's reluctance to move News at Ten. As you say, they move it later for football but why not for their biggest week of the year?

They could have pushed everything 30 minutes later, BGT likely starts when Eastenders has finished, no clash there. BGT finishes to 9:30 so its unlikely non-Corrie fans will start watching another channel as other programming likely started at 9pm and they would have missed the first 30 mins. Corrie is still in a really good slot from 9:30 till 10. Then you have the BGT results from 10 till 10:30. Also, it keeps people watching News at Ten as they will have missed the BBC News.

Or they could have extended the BGT resulsts show for another 10-15 minutes and got another ad break in. Thus, starting ITV News at 10:15.

BGT can't go on past 10pm because of the younger contestants though.

They can't have BGT after 10pm because children aren't allowed in the studio after then.

Beat me to it

Basically like last year then. Maybe they should've gone with last years schedule, but this way they've eradicated all the filler.


I think it's worked out well. Coronation Street's given a chance to gain more viewers on a key storyline. You don't have to watch it full time to know the basic plotline. Same with EastEnders live - you didn't need to know the storyline then to follow the episode.


One issue if they had Britain's Got Talent on 8.30pm-10.30pm: the youinger acts cannot be on TV beyond 10.00pm. Also, I think people will start to drift off after all the acts had performed and find out the result the following day if it didn't finish until 10.30pm.

Hardly a fair comment. BBC.co.uk is a service on it's own covering a wide range of genres. ITV.com is just a programme support service.

I visit bbc.co.uk daily, I hardly ever visit itv.com. That's because I want to know today's actual news and aren't generally interested in 'backstage gossip' and 'exclusives'. Plus I'm old fashioned and still watch TV on the TV and not on the computer.

This is not an issue, both websites are perfectly fine in what they do. In fact I'm not in favour of how bbc.co.uk has been downgraded in recent years and would be even more if some get their way.

Maybe they're looking to boost News at Ten? It worked last year - albeit temporarily.

Anyone else want to tell me?

In fairness though, they did have some shows last year air from 9-10:30 and put all the kids on different shows. So they could have done that again.

Edit: They had one 9-10:30 show on the Monday and that was by far the highest rated semi-final. It had a 13.64m average and 15.35m peak at 10pm.

Surely after an exhausting week of Corrie and BGT overkill, with lashings of Em Fm thrown in too, most ITV viewers will be longing for a break by Friday?

Perhaps they might (unthinkable this, I know) get up off their sofas and do something else for one night this week?

[to show post]

If it's a key storyline, then surely viewers would come naturally anyway to watch it in a normal slot? Especially since, like you said, you wouldn't have needed to watch it full time to get the jist of it. Sure, it wouldn't get the 10m it got last night but it'd still be capable of around 9m I'd reckon. Let's not forget the 7pm episode last night got a lower rating than what most regular Monday episodes get!


Yeah, I just realised that! It is a bit of an annoying issue but they could put the kids on one of the other shows which finish before 10pm such as Wednesday where they could run BGT from 8pm. I think they did something like that last year.

Isn't that kind of the point? I'm sure this whole week has been designed to boost Corrie after a weak start to the year.

Its unlikely I would have thought.

Although, if tomorrow at 9:45pm Mark Austin does a bulletin plugging the story about Stevie Starr, the regurgitator, being rushed to hospital having a snooker ball trapped in his throat then I would say you were right.


That may well be the case but any momentum the soap builds up this week will be ruined when its scheduled all over the place with the World Cup starting.

Does the RSPCA have similar guidelines for dancing dogs?

Corrie is gaining viewers at the expense of BGT. It really isn't worth it IMO.

The average for the two episodes last night was 9.0m which is only a little more than the 8.6m average they had on the Monday two weeks ago! Arguably, two regularly scheduled Monday episodes could have averaged 9.0m with the current storyline.

It hasn't been a weak start to the year for Corrie, by its standards. Ratings are up year-on-year for the first time in 7 years.

I'm not so sure the viewers would come - not in June where the early evening's are hurt more by people being out and about. Plus Coronation Street lacks the hype that EastEnders' receives, so overall I don't think it'd do much better than normal in it's usual slot with the storyline (high 8ms at best)


True - I just think 10pm is the drop off for many members of the audience. Then again, D.M.N. stated the Monday semi final last year (9-10.30) performed the best out of all of them so people must've been interested in it. I just don't think it'd work long term.

I think in relation to EastEnders it has been. All three soaps have seen a lift - Corrie's has been the smallest by some margin. It's also been the first time that EE has been ahead (up until recently).

I don't think it's worth it either as I don't envisage any long-term benefit for Corrie.

Not always, going back to the late 80s both of them fell behind a show from Australia that was originally a daytime schedule filler, but I know what you mean as Coronation St has been around twice as long as Eastenders and is seen with more affection than Eastenders. However, they do seem to run neck and neck most of the time.

Even if Corrie drops to 4m and Eastenders goes up to 10m on a bad day (unlikely on both accounts I know but helps me get my point across) I still think Corrie will be regarded as the number 1 soap purely because of the length of time it has been on and when they aren't doing the stunts, it can be very realistic. Everyone can recognise at least one character in the programme to identify with someone they know in real life. Its a bit harder in EE where all the characters are a bit more generic.

Something that I'll be looking out for in a couple of weeks will be the "reach" for ITV1 during BGT week. Their total share will go up (of course!) but will their reach go down?

K

Speaking of soaps and moving away from the ITV1 sandwich, how is Hollyoaks doing as this has had a very nervous spring with ratings down to 800,000 at one stage? I did hear it was up to a million again.
While everything mentions Coronation St, it would be interesting to see how the lesser soaps are doing. After all, my 17 year old niece would rather jump off a cliff than watch Coronation St, but a lot of her friends rarely miss Hollyoaks.

+1 Its pretty weird decision making, Corrie will get a boost this week like ITV news did last year and fall back to normal next week.

So EastEnders is ahead an episode but i've just noticed it also airs next Wednesday at 7:30pm so i guess thats just an extra episode given a big storyline airs?

I think that one next Wednesday is to make up for the one that isn't on the Monday of the following week

Hollyoaks had managed to get back above a million again however last nights episode slipped below it again getting 984k