Given that ITV1 air nothing female/young/popular at 7.30pm much anymore, I think Waterloo Road should take this slot and transfer to half hour episodes.

BBC One, as shown with their Carling Cup (Man Utd v Man City) match, can achieve massive figures if they squeeze football into 8pm-10pm, and maybe save the analysis until a later Match of the Day roundup.

It will be a while yet until the BBC can invest - but I definitely think it shouldn't rule itself out of a live midweek package of Premier League games, as well as FA Cup and Carling Cup coverage.

We'll see.

If anything the licence fee is going to be falling from 2012 onwards, at least in real terms. It's certainly not going to be rising.

So there is no chance at all of the BBC sports budget rising to any significant degree.

There is, quite literally, zero chance of the BBC winning any live Premier League games. There is a small chance of a fairly limited FA Cup package but even that may be dependent on losing other rights.

I'd say their main sporting contracts, F1, Six Nations, Premiership and Wimbledon are almost certainly 100% secure, I'd be surprised if any moved to another network - what'd probably happen is that money is freed up from 'smaller' less lucrative contracts.

I will be interesting to see how the BBC approaches the next England/FA Cup rights contest given that they were rather stung the last time and ITV dont seem massively keen on the FA Cup side of things.

Last of the Summer Wine writer knew series 31 would be the final one when he wrote it:

http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/local...6081-26919975/

New Zealand Chart
July 11-17

One News TVOne 12/07/2010 781.0
Outrageous Fortune TV3 13/07/2010 711.6
Wild Vets TVOne 11/07/2010 703.4
Shortland Street TV2 12/07/2010 656.1
Sunday(PM) TVOne 11/07/2010 653.4
National Bank Country Calendar TVOne 17/07/2010 625.2
Fair Go TVOne 14/07/2010 620.4
Rapid Response TVOne 12/07/2010 617.2
Close Up TVOne 13/07/2010 616.3
Border Patrol TVOne 12/07/2010 594.7
Coronation Street TVOne 13/07/2010 569.8
Police Ten 7 TV2 15/07/2010 555.9
Animal Rescue TVOne 14/07/2010 551.3
Rescue 1 TV2 15/07/2010 541.6
Intl Rugby Tri Nations SKY Sport 1 17/07/2010 511.9
Two and a Half Men (R) TV2 14/07/2010 484.6
The Big Bang Theory TV2 11/07/2010 469.9
Neighbours at War TV2 12/07/2010 466.0
Desperate Housewives TV2 12/07/2010 464.8
Hell's Kitchen TV2 13/07/2010 461.2
3 News TV3 13/07/2010 452.2
Private Practice TV2 13/07/2010 439.6
Cougar Town TV2 14/07/2010 424.8
The Middle TV2 11/07/2010 422.4
Dancing On Ice TVOne 16/07/2010 421.9

Well that clears things up completely and should be posted on all threads probably. He is rather modest over the viewing figures-yes they have been respectable recently but in its heyday they were much much more than that.

A couple of comments on soap scheduling

Wouldn't that create an awkward 8.30-9pm slot though

What goes in there the rest of the time though? Half hour filler or a new hour long show at 8pm up against Eastenders. Both would probably struggle

While far from ideal the 8.30 slots for Coronation Street do nicely fill some otherwise potential tricky gaps for ITV. The only exception might be Friday if ITV 'gave up' and went to repeats between 8pm and 10pm


Or maybe go to Ofcom, ask for reduction to one half hour bulletin a day plus evening updates, and offer to invest more in Milkshake and Shake

Outrageous Fortune is the 2nd most watched show of the week?!?!?! Wow. Meanwhile, the US adaptation of the show The Scoundrels is flopping like hell, sinking to a very low (even for summer standards) 0.6 in 18-49 and 3.082 million total viewers (http://pifeedback.com/eve/forums?a=t...9013#229109013). Desperate Housewives and Private Practice performed quite well. Although not as high as previous seasons, still good. Interesting how eight of the top ten shows are news/factual shows.

What you have said is really silly. Who knows what the future holds? Five or ITV may grab Formula One and Carling Cup post-2012.

There may be, by that point, calls for terrestrial Premier League matches.

You have no idea, and nor do I. I think the BBC may axe BBC Three and Four, and that would certainly boost funds for sport.

You are extremely naive/stupid to say that the BBC isn't a big player in terms of sport.

I think the market may improve, in which case rights will go for less.

FA Cup, for example, is likely to return exclusively to the BBC:

- FA Cup needs a popularity boost, BBC guarantees consistently high audiences
- FA will sell for less because of disasters with ITV and Setanta. BBC will have competition from only Sky and ESPN.

Yes, this is an interesting conundrum.

The BBC's problem is that the money they saved on their old FA contract (£60m per year) they instead spent on F1 (£40m per year) and Football League / Carling Cup (exact amount unknown but in region of £15m to £20m).

I can't see them dropping F1.

If they went for England / FA Cup then it would certainly make sense to drop Football League / Carling Cup. But that would not generate anywhere near the required saving.

It's also hard to see where many savings can come from smaller areas. The 3 big contracts (MOTD, F1 + Six Nations) account for 50% of the sports budget. Add in the big non-annual events and there is really not much scope for meaningful savings.

I guess an option could be for ITV's current FA contract to be split in two - ie ITV keeps England games and BBC takes FA Cup. Then drop Football League / Carling Cup leaving a manageable cost increase.

Really? Well I think I'll leave others to judge that.


Did I say that?

I'm willing to state here that there will never ever be live Premier League football on terrestrial television. Setanta put in a bid of £159 million for 23 live matches in the last auction, and those 23 matches are nowhere near the best matches either. In addition, the Premier League put conditions on what time matches are played, and Setanta's package 9which ESPN now have) confined them to Saturday teatime and Monday night. What chance the BBC moving Strictly and EastEnders for Bolton vs Wigan? There is no way they can be moved (otherwise you can be sure Setanta would have done it) and it's impossible anyway as moving even one fixture would have an impact on others, the schedule is so tightly packed.

In addition, the BBC already get four million a week for Match of the Day so there's no great clamour for live games. The only possible way live Premier League football would ever be shown on television is if the Premier League introduced a package of ten first choice matches, like the Football League did. Everything else is simply too big a commitment for a terrestrial broadcaster. And that won't happen as the Football League wanted the exposure which the Premier League doesn't need, and it's Sky's crown jewel so they would simply pay whatever is required to get it.

Anyway, in 2003, the last time all the rights went to Sky, they said they'd sub-licence eight matches to terrestrial broadcasters to stop the EU moaning, only for them to come back and say nobody had met the reserve price so they were no longer for sale. If the BBC and ITV couldn't make it pay then, there's no bloody chance they could do it now.

What would be the point of that, though? The Football League deal gives them two prime time Carling Cup semi-finals in January and a final played in mid-February, whereas the FA Cup may offer more matches but they're mostly all in the afternoon and the final's in the middle of May. In addition, the deal gives them loads of Football League content for the website, Football Focus, Final Score and the regional shows, every week of the season.

The Carling Cup deal, from a broadcasters' point of view, is probably better than the FA Cup deal.

Yes maybe there will be more than the usual behind the scenes deal making next time around. However the BBC do have an enviable list of big contracts and cherry picked events over a large range of sports, which I reckon they have done well to maintain. The one notable absentee is the lack of top class live football, maybe its a step too far but it will be an interesting time when the rights come around (here I mean FACup/England).

Ofcourse there is top class live football every two years-it may have been reported here but I read that BBC/ITV are holding out with a combined offer of 52 million for the Euro Championships 2012. The fact that it cant go to satellite is a great bargaining chip for the terrestrials.

What a fantastic summer of sport 2012 will be.

I agree entirely with your post with one very, very minor proviso.

A government looking to court popularity (I won't say which Party as I don't want to make a political point but the Party is fairly obvious) COULD, just possibly, decide to make a small number of live Premier League games listed events. Say something like 10 1st picks.

I don't for one moment think this will happen but it just could (say a 5% chance).

Assuming the current Government doesn't fall we would obviously be looking at 2016 absolute earliest this could happen and more likely 2019 (as 2016/19 contract would likely be signed in early 2015).

I think this is the most likely outcome. The FA must be acutely aware that they'll never get £70m pa again as they do from ITV at present.

They might try shifting more ties to Pay TV, but I still think the FTA portion of the FA Cup and England matches is going to be too onerous for either the BBC or ITV to take on by themselves given their respective circumstances. A couple of packages splitting the matches would work in everyone's favour.

The point would be to simply get more top quality live football. ITV's FA Cup contract gives 14 live games (ignoring Rounds 1 and 2).

Whilst I agree with all your points the Carling Cup does only give the BBC 3 live games. Regular top quality live football is by far the biggest hole in the BBC's sports portfolio.

Thst's not necessarily a bad thing. His wife is available now they've axed the Aussie version.

Why would the BBC want to cut one of there dramas that can achieve good figures in it's slot into 30 minute episodes when the format they have currently works. I don't see the point?

Especially when it actually does pretty well when it has been moved around all over the place this year and viewers are already used to a hour show.

I cant find the ratings for Sherlock, anyone know?

7.5m.

Thank you very much. Thought it would be more than that!

I can see Eastenders being even higher than last night (9.2m), the rest of the schedule not so impressive. Hoping for a boost for Holby City and New Tricks.

Piers Morgan Hollywood on ITV was an atrocious repeat programme suitable for Living TV not the supposed #1 commercial channel. The Bill on its last legs

Hope the European Athletics does ok over the 3 hours it was on, would be great if Britain's first medals were seen by a respectable audience ( more than ITV anyway ) there was a good reveal in Emmerdale but the rest of ITV is surely going to be under 3 million 7.30pm to mdnight.