Saturdays are normally around 600,000-1 million down on the series average, BB7 was even getting 3m Saturdays when other shows would be getting 5-6m.

Channel 4 are right to ditch it then as only its hardcore fans are watching it now. Although some people are saying it could survive on a digital channel, I doubt it as Endemol would want too much and it's a big commitment for any channel. I reckon 2-2.5 million viewers is the show's natural level now and it won't go any higher.

Didn't explain myself properly. Not laughing at people saying 2m is a good audience. Just delighted that the programme no longer hogs the headlines the way it used to. Nowdays the tabloids give it no more coverage that they would give, say, Top Gear. It has become just another TV programme.

Eastenders and Corrie's ratings may also be well down on what they used to get a few years ago, but they still get big press attention. Corrie's on the front page of the Sunday Mirror today.

BB is on the front page of Daily Star today with Sunshine saying she was bullied in the house.

Iain
One of Big Bro's biggest allies, The Sun, now calls it Big Bore and its TV critic is counting off the days till it ends and refers to the housemates as losers. Gone are the days when The Sun would devote ten pages to it and even its biggest supporter, The Daily Star, has dramatically reduced its coverage. People now seem to laugh at its misfortunes and falling ratings- a kind of schadenfreude similar to that Crossroads suffered in its last years.
Coronation St and Eastenders might have suffered a ratings decline, but are still in the Top 5. Maybe it's a case that a lot of people have moved on, the nice weather, etc, but they still have a healthy following.

Overnights showed 7 million average and a 93.1 share These figures are calculating people watching away from home aswell, there were massive screens placed on several big squares across the big cities and the dutch medcia are reporting the 11.2 million as the reach figure. Biggest reach for a football match ever in Holland is the 2000 semi-finals which reached 11.7 million. Bodes well for Tuesday which is the first knock-out match in prime-time.

The Dutch are huge football fans. Actually, apart from darts, there is no other major winter sport over there: there is no racing, rugby, to compete for people's attention and teams like Ajax have enormous followings.

Well, Michael Aitkens' credits from the Radio Times Guide To TV Comedy are...
The River
Waiting for God
Roy's Raiders
Honey For Tea
A Perfect State
Life As We Know It

Two we know about - and yes, A Perfect State did end up on Sunday afternoons - while Honey For Tea was that awful series with Felicity Kendal in it, and in Will Wyatt's book, he says, "Producer Gareth Gwenlan went on a four week holiday the day after the first episode was transmitted, proving the secret of comedy is timing". The River was the sitcom starring David Essex and Life As We Know It, which even I'd forgotten about, was a family sitcom with Richard Wilson and Stephanie Cole that only got one series. I think Waiting For God was a bit of a fluke.

He also wrote A Class Act, that stupid ITV drama with Joanna Lumley, which was a big hit.


I remember their Eurovision show didn't do very well, but it was opposite Corrie, and even if it was a hit, the whole concept of Jobs For The Boys was Hale and Pace not being comedians, which was they were signed to do. It was a weird signing, Paul Jackson was justifying their signing the second he did it, saying how they were desperate to try something new and they used to be fashionable because they were in The Young Ones and that.

h&p@bbc was such a disaster, it had been on the shelf for ages. It was a weird forty minute duration and that, couple with the simple fact they didn't say "hello" at the start and "goodbye" at the end, suggests that it had been massively re-edited before it got on screen. The other project from Hale and Pace at the Beeb was Oddbods, a silent family comedy, of which they made two, but the second went out at four o'clock on a Bank Holiday Monday afternoon.


Safe and Sound was indeed on Friday nights, I can't remember what it was on after, but I do remember it was moved from 8.30 to 8pm halfway through - ie, opposite The Bill.

I wonder, what BBC1 and ITV primetime shows would have got in a chart like that since 1999? A couple of ITV sitcoms, probably - Teenage Kicks, Moving Wallpaper? Al Murray's sketch show as well, probably. On the Beeb, Modern Masters would probably get in there. What other primetime series in the past decade have endured unbelievably awful figures?


In the first ever week of Big Brother, the nightly shows lasted five minutes, but halfway through the run they moved from 11pm to 10pm by popular demand.


This might be OK but I think it's ridiculous scheduling of the Beeb to show the first episode immediately after a repeat of Total Wipeout, because they look extremely similar and it'll just make people think that's all they do on Saturday nights. The other interesting thing next Saturday is a repeat of Mitchell and Webb on BBC1 for the first time.


I do remember in 1999, the Open ended up going on until just before eight o'clock, and they cut down the news, scheduled for 7.40, to five minutes to get back on schedule. Around that time too, if the news on a weekend or Bank Holiday was a bit later than usual, they'd sometimes do an extra one earlier in the evening, so you'd have news at 7.50 and 11.00, to make up for the latter's late slot. In fact there were a few occasions when ITV would do the Saturday night news at 7.50, to get it out of the way, usually against the lottery.


Incidentally, there are eight episodes of Midsomer Murders on ITV this week.

Thing is no matter how much negative press it gets, it gets the highest ratings for C4 so i find everyone slating it laughable . Its like what BGT is to ITV and what Eastenders is to BBC1... people can laugh all they want, but C4 wont be when they deliver flop after flop when it ends.

John Nettles must make an absolute fortune in repeat fees for Midsomer Murders.

Not really. The ITV3 fees are minimal. The ITV1 daytime fees are about 10% of the 1st run fees. Its only primetime repeats on ITV1 that generate good income.

BTW I see UTV are showing in-vision signing on its film this afternoon - never seen that on a daytime film before!

Come Dine With Me rates higher and it wouldn't surprise me if this fills the BB slot next year, along with Million Pound Drop. However, I wonder what C4 will do with the thousands of hours of BB coverage they have.

Midsomer Murders seems to be on all the time, whether its ITV3, afternoons on ITV1 or primetime ITV1. I wouldnt be complaining.

With half of 2010 now gone, here's the primetime averages for BBC1 and ITV1 for the first half of the year:

BBC1: 21.6% (H1 '09: 21.9%)
Mon: 20.3% (21.8%), Tue: 23.8% (22.4%), Wed: 19.8% (20.1%), Thu: 22.5% (23.7%), Fri: 22.1% (21.6%), Sat: 22.8% (23.3%), Sun: 20.1% (20.1%)

ITV1: 21.5% (22.3%)
Mon: 25.1% (26.1%), Tue: 15.5% (19.0%), Wed: 21.6% (23.1%), Thu: 21.7% (18.4%), Fri: 22.2% (23.3%), Sat: 21.5% (22.4%), Sun: 22.8% (24.0%)

BBC1 beat ITV1 in the first half of the year - a reverse of what happened in 2009. Both channels are down from the same stage last year - BBC1 by 1.4% and ITV1 by a larger 3.6%.

BBC1 made gains on Tuesdays and Fridays. Tuesdays' rise might be due to ITV1 shorterning Emmerdale from 1 hour this time last year to 30 minutes. Friday rise due to successful drama such as Silent Witness and Ashes to Ashes. Biggest loss has been on Mondays which were down 7% - lack of drama and flops such as High Street Dreams were major factors. ITV1 down every single day apart from Thursdays compared to last year. Thursdays were up due to the new soap block. Although ITV1 won more evenings per week (4 vs. 3), the poor Tuesday share really drags down their average. Without the two England matches, ITV1 would've averaged even lower, at 21.2%!

Weeknight 9pm slot averages
Here are the weeknight 9pm slot averages for the first half of the year:

BBC1: 4.6m (H1 '09: 4.7m... H1 '08: 5.1m)
2010- Mon: 4.3m, Tue: 4.6m, Wed: 4.2m, Thu: 5.1m, Fri: 5.0m
2009- Mon: 5.1m, Tue: 4.1m, Wed: 5.5m, Thu: 4.6m, Fri: 4.2m
2008- Mon: 5.3m, Tue: 5.2m, Wed: 5.9m, Thu: 4.4m, Fri: 4.9m

ITV1: 4.4m (H1 '09: 4.4m...H1 '08: 4.4m)
2010- Mon: 5.3m, Tue: 3.4m, Wed: 5.4m, Thu: 4.0m, Fri: 3.8m
2009- Mon: 5.7m, Tue: 4.2m, Wed: 4.4m, Thu: 3.8m, Fri: 4.0m
2008- Mon: 4.5m, Tue: 4.8m, Wed: 4.1m, Thu: 4.7m, Fri: 3.7m

Again, BBC1 beats ITV1 in the weeknight 9pm stakes. Unlike the primetime shares, however, in this ITV1 has held onto its 9pm audience since 2008 and closed the gap on BBC1 who's lost half a million in the same period.

Thursdays have been BBC1's best weeknight for the 9pm slot, probably due to Silent Witness, Outnumbered, Have I Got News For You, Election Debate and some more I can't remember. BBC1 has built its Thursday 9pm audience year-on-year since 2008, the only day apart from Friday to be up from 2 years ago. Tuesdays are up from last year. Pretty big losses on Mondays and Wednesdays - Wednesdays' loss must be due to ITV's football switching from Tuesday to this day and Midsomer Murders relocating here.

ITV1's made year-on-year gains on Wednesdays and Thursdays, a big one for Wednesdays in particular which was their best 9pm slot day for this year so far. Friday's loss would've been even more had it not been for the England World Cup match they aired a couple of weeks ago. In fact, it'd probably have been tied with Tuesdays which as we all know has rated appaullingly at 9pm. Funny to see that a couple of years ago, Tuesdays was their best weeknight for the 9pm slot!

Darts has decreased over the years due to the networks giving it less prominent placings in the schedules, F1, Tour de France and big tournament tennis all do pretty well but the Olympics and Football World Cup/Euro's wipe the floor with all off them. But with all of them it is, the further the Dutch get, the more people watch.

ITV also seem keen on showing Columbo, again a big hit for them in the seventies when it had 16 million viewers and now a cult show. I have no objection to these old dramas being repeated as they still look good now.

Hockey is reasonably big

Yesterdays ITV schedule with 2 Midsomer episodes was way too much. I'd hazard that ITV1s schedule damaged ITV3 which can get close to 1m for drama repeats on a Saturday evening when ITV1 is following an entertainment lead schedule. Its in ITVs interest to keep Midsomer repeats off ITV1 primetime for commercial interests so I'd be surprised if we see it frequently in primetime

Big Brother section on The Sun website

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...z/big_brother/

They're hardly writing it off. The TV critic in question has always hated Big Brother.

Its also on the cover of todays Daily Star. Not bad for being 'just another TV show'. Where is the Top Gear section of The Sun website?

Admittedly it is flagging in press attention, but it still gets its fair share and definitely up on the past couple of years.

Yes the actual quality of the film itself always amazes me. The old 60's Star Trek episodes (and many old American series) look remarkable today(though not the special effects obviously)-and yet for instance the Bergerac episodes on BBC in the eighties look really poor now. Presumably the BBC didnt go for high quality film -though I cant imagine the film itself would have been a massive outlay. Ofcourse I could be talking rubbish here.

Star Trek was digitally remastered hence the good quality on CBS Action at the moment.

Tennis was always big in the Netherlands and, of course, cycling is a big deal. Martial arts seem popular as well over there. However, horse racing doesn't exist in any form, although equestrianism was popular in the seventies.

It is now getting the centre pages most days, compared to 1/4 to 1/2 a page last year.


They like their speed skating though don't they. Or are good at it at least.


Wouldn't use that to defend it - indeed the Daily Star's continued support has arguably been it's biggest problem in recent years because it just gives the show completely the wrong image - plus Endemol have never had the balls to take them on and stop them printing absolute bollocks about the show which is clearly untrue - as I suspect today's headline is too. Indeed I made a complaint last year about an interview they ran and they admitted they'd completely made it up, but were unapologetic for anything other than getting court.

The latter, like so many sports over here, only attract the big audiences in Olympic years. Other years they are televised but usually on Sunday afternoons when there isn't much football on, or in passing in sports news round-ups.

Dutch TV landscape is pretty wide with ten FTA big channels available (3 public, 4 RTL and 3 SBS group) so huge ratings like this only come from sports. News broadcasts usually top the ratings charts together with our Match of the day, the one remaining Dutch soap and some factual programmes. US series do well, but are more aimed at demo's than big audiences.

Its still getting coverage by them though, and BB coverage has always predominantly been in the gutter press.

The reason Endemol don't do anything is because BB thrives on publicity, and all publicity is good publicity. Daily Star always make stuff up, there was an interview a few years ago with a housemate who was still in the house! But this year the Daily Star have actually been spot on for once.