Excellent rating for The Inbetweeners on C4 last night. I can wait to see the official figures.

POG probably not quite as high as I expected but not bad really, to me the shows little changed- bar the bigger studio to when he was on at 5pm. How much would Wossy have got in the 9pm slot- similar ratings to this I expect. He also did well not to lose any audience from last week.

Embarrassing Bodies: Back to the Clinic was indeed a rehash show of 45 minutes of old programming and then look at them now although it like Grand Designs does seem to have lost quite a bit of its audience over the last year or 2. Channel 4 really need to find a big hit in the 9pm timeslot, any news of what they are/ have commisioned to show next year when Big Brother used to be on?

I keep forgetting how consistently poorly ITV is doing, going by this thread I believe it's so successful, but the ratings are another story aren't they, they really are so dependent on Cowell and the jungle thing to prop up their averages.

Well, they're basically the same thing, anyway, just with a different cast. Have they upped the violence with the arrival of Above Suspicion, to appeal to anyone who's missing Wire in the Blood?

They're pretty much identical (and both pretty poor) but the last series of Above Suspicion officially averaged about 2 million more than the last run of T&R so I can't really blame her!

Out of all them the only decent thing was POG.
Apart from that I have nothing else to say as your spot on.

It will be interesting to see how New Tricks fares on Thursday 30th. Will it do better or worse than Fridays?

Low for Paul O'Grady, but it was always going to be low in such a silly slot. 9pm is way too late. Will probably be down to 3m by the end of the series. He'd get 3m at 5pm on Fridays after the clocks go back. Or if they want to play it in prime time, Sundays at 7pm would be perfect.

@score....that's a VERY upbeat assessment of ITV's current weekday 9pm output. I'm not sure it's even shared by the channel itself.

I don't think 71 Degrees North lost so many viewers because of the slot change; more that its first rating last Saturday was boosted massively by the TXF inheritance. My guess is that it's going to continue to shed viewers for the rest of the run. For a factual show, it's certainly not cheap so anything sub-3m will be counted as a flop.

I also question that whatever comes in to replace Bouquet of Barbed Wire will do as well either, as it's unlikely to generate the same publicity hype and level of expectation.

L&O UK is going to struggle against Five's football - particularly the nights when Liverpool are on - because it's such a male skewing series. Also the inhertitance it gets from Corrie will be lower than expected on Europa League nights, as Corrie is strongest in the north-west, where both Liverpool and Man City (the other team involved in the competition) are based. A shame really, as I personally think L&O is a really good series.

POG is doing OK in raw numbers, but I'd be interested to see the demographics. His audience for the C4, and ITV1, teatime shows was old and downmarket. So, even while the headline figure may be decent enough, it may not be so attractive to the advertisers.

Champions League football will get stronger as the competition progresses, although Liverpool's absence is a blow for ITV, because - along with Man United - they have a genuine nationwide fan-base. Spurs are a poor substitute in ratings terms.

All in all, I'd say the channel is in for a pretty bleak Autumn, and will post a further year-on-year audience decline for the period. And remember, this is the time of year when advertising spend is at its height, so ITV should really be wheeling out big guns every night. At the moment - England or Man Utd Champions League games aside - it's going to struggle to win any weekday 9pm slots.

I can understand why she'd prefer to do Above Suspicion.

Do you know why Trial and Retribution went down from ten to six episodes at the time Above Suspicion came about? Was there a great desire to do Above Suspicion, leading to Trial and Retribution having a shorter commission, or did Trial and Retribution get shortened because Victoria Smurfit was pregnant, and Above Suspicion get created to basically fill a gap?

I suppose you're right that the weeknight 9pm ratings for last week were similar to last year. But I think the year-on-year gap will increase from October onwards as ITV had a pretty good October schedule last year - even 7 Days on the Breadline did well for Tuesday standards and I dont think 71dN will match that. Fridays will probably see the biggest year-on-year drop but then again I guess Fridays early next year will experience a boost due to Benidorm's return. Also Bushmills makes a good point that there will be no Liverpool Champions League matches. They'll have to show Arsenal/Chelsea matches which rarely get 4m+ for group matches.


The thing which surprised me the most about L&OUK's rating was that it was beaten by The Young Ones. If it had managed 4m and won its slot, with BBC1 getting a low rating too, then I would've accepted that the football dented everything etc. It might be the case that last week's 5m was a series high and all remaining weeks will rate in the low 4's regardless of competition. I guess we'll have to see what happens next week - it ought to rise by at least 0.5m given the competition.


In terms of Sunday night dramas, I definitely agree that ITV is pretty strong. In terms of no. of hours, Wild at Heart, Lewis, Foyle's War, Doc Martin, Poirot/Marple amount to ~35 hours per year (although Doc Martin is bi-annual). Compare that with BBC's ~25 hours for Sherlock, Lark Rise to Candleford, Wallander, Inspector George Gently. Factor in the Saturday dramas (DW, Merlin, Primeval) and overall for the weekend, the BBC and ITV are pretty similar.

But when it comes to weeknight drama series, there's a larger gap between the two broadcasters. ITV has Law & Order UK, Midsomer Murders, Whitechapel, Above Suspicion (about 35 hours per year altogether), whereas on BBC1 there's Hustle, Spooks, Silent Witness, New Tricks, Waking the Dead, Torchwood which are capable of 5m+ (50+ hours).

ITV could do with one or two more returnable series on weeknights. I know they've been trying to find new dramas and it hasn't really worked out for them in the last 5 years but that's why I think they should've kept one or two of the dramas they've cancelled and axed them after they'd found the new successful dramas to replace them. What they did is axe the middle-ground dramas which got about 5m in the hope of finding new hits which would get better ratings but that hasn't happened. They're now in a situation where they still have the big hitters but there are very few 'middle-ground' dramas.


There was an article on MG saying that they're hoping for 5m+ for the whole series, upmarket audiences and critical acclaim for Downton Abbey for it to return. I'm not sure how this'll rate because ITV don't really do period dramas much but it's got a really good slot and has been promoted a lot on-screen. I'll have to wait and see how Joe Maddisons War does tomorrow because if that struggles to get 5m then I won't be expecting DA to post a particularly big launch audence.


I think Single Father will be taking the Tuesday slot. Just a guess based on what weve 'heard so far that it's starting in the first week of October which means it can't air on Sundays since George Gently will be there. I dont think they're wasting George Gently because how many of its viewers really watch The X Factor? Even if it drops to 4m, the repeats rate so well (close to 4m most of the time) that it probably doesn't matter that much if its first airing ratings drop.

I dread to think how much Merlin's rating will drop this week, with no Strictly and starting the same time as X Factor. I don't get it - the BBC must spend a bomb on it, but they don't seem to support it at all. I would have thought they could forget the repeat of Hole in the Wall and bump everything half an hour earlier so that Merlin at least some start on X Factor.

It will be interesting to see the rating this week. Whatever happens, at least we won't end up with 13 or 14% of the auidience switching over halfway through (when Factor started) as they did last week. That must have been a heartbreaking thing for the people who work on the show.

Figures from Broadcast show that BBC1 all hours audience share so far this year is running at 20.75%, which is not all that far from maintaining the audience for 2009 which was 20.94% at year end. ITV on the other hand has drifted from 17.55% last year to 16.40% so far this year. And presumably compensating for shows like Doc Martin is not easy. ITV will be stronger next year I guess but that is assuming X Factor runs and there arent wholesale changes to the years structure which might just lose some viewers.

XF coming back on Saturday and Sunday is the equivalent of having a Battleship and it will be interesting to see how many viewers ITV can gain beforehand and keep afterwards. Joe Maddisons War has the look of something much more than a one-off, its a pity ITV couldnt have come up with a different title given that we also have Foyles War.

My question for the day is: What is different about Chris Evans segment of the One Show to the rest of the weeks(Iv only caught a few clips)? And was it worth all the ridiculousness of Bleakley/ Chiles gate?

I can never understand that. Why start watching something if you're going to turn over half way. Just record one or the other.

BBC1's held up very well especially in peaktime where they're only down 0.1 share point to 21.6% from last year. Does ITV1's 16.40% include HD? If yes, that's a pretty big year-on-year decline. And unlike previous years, the decline isn't really shortenedd by gains in their digital channels because only ITV3 is up year-on-year (from 1.8% to 2.1%). ITV2 is down while ITV4 and CITV are flat.

I actually don't think ITV will be stronger next year in terms of maintaining that all day share. Remember that 2010 share is boosted by the Football World Cup. They have the Rugby World Cup next year but I doubt that will be pulling in the same sort of shares. And if The X Factor isn't on air, that'll be another big loss for them next year.

The RUWC is on in the morning, which doesn't help and the sport only gets good figures if England do well. Suppose, though, if Cowell decamps to America, I'm A Celeb does badly this year and ITV decide to axe it, then ITV will have a terrible year next year.

Quite right. The drift away to Multichannel is remorseless and seems to affect ITV1 more than BBC1.

Not sure about the HD element-the only specification is that figures include + 1 where applicable.

Just for further reference: (all hours %)

BBC2 2009 = 7.55% -2010 = 6.94%
C4 2009 = 7.70% - 2010 = 7.19%
C5 2009 = 4.93% -2010 = 4.51%
Multichannel 2009 = 41.32%- 2010 = 43.97%

My understanding is that the BBC want to do hour-long entertainment editions of TOS on Friday but Chiles proved to be inept at presenting the last bunch. (Didn't he make a rubbish job of handling a mischevious Peter Kay?) so the BBC drafted in Evans, at which point Chiles understandably took a strop and left.

The BBC must have decided on the start date for the hour-long shows ages ago and it's all been budgeted so they can't start them earlier (which is a bit inflexible of them).

Evans probably started presenting earlier than planned to cover for Jason Manford who couldn't present the Friday show because of his stand-up committments. This way all three new presenters started at the same time.

From the little bit I've seen (admittedly very little) I'm not sure Evans seems to be very comfortable presenting "regular editions" of the show. I don't think that's what he signed up for.

Thanks for this. Looks like all the terrestrial channels apart from BBC1 have experienced pretty big declines.

BBC1 down just 1%, but BBC2 down 8%, ITV1 fell 7%, C4 also fell 7% and C5 down 9%. [With HD included, some of those declines might've been reduced by a further percent or so].

BBC Breakfast's audience growing must've helped BBC1 maintain its share to some extent and their primetime has very been stable too (helped by EastEnders growth in ratings). Good year so far for BBC1.

This thinking is the sort of thing that bankers do. Just because the trend has been "remorseless" it doesnt mean it will necessarily continue in the future.

You dont factor in:

1) Channels closing - already we see Virgin 1 and Bravo closing. I'd predict a few more going too (Five USA and Fiver possibly)

2) Removal of more channels from free services and going behind paywalls.

3) Desmond's word may prove as reliable as an estate agents and rather than invest in five he turns into a cheap and nasty outfit

If you end up with free channels that basically comprised of BBC, ITV and Ch 4 services then the ITV family share may actually increase slightly in the next 2-3 years.

He only really seems comfortable talking about his millionaire lifestyle or name dropping his show biz mates these days. I think the only thing tha would work for him now is a light ent format where he can still to a format.

For what I know most of what you have said is wrong.

Evans was bought to the TOS to make the Friday shows feel different to the rest of the week and to have a more entertainment feel to it, inculding bigger stars. The bosses at the beeb wanted the TOS to kick off the weekend for BBC1. Bringing Evans to host these editions had nothing to do with Chiles' ability. It was the simple case Jay Hunt wanted Evans to host them while Chiles wanted to host them himself.

I have seen a few Friday editions of TOS and they do feel different. They are a lot light hearted and have a much more entertainment feel to it. As a flowing One Show viewer it is not really to my taste and not why I watch the TOS.

To be honest I have no real insight into the industry, its just an outsiders impression of a figure. But Multichannel has eaten away at the terrestrials since multichannel was multichannel. I guess there will have to be a point at which the terrestrials start to maintain audience levels, though as to when this will be I have little idea.

Yet not switching to Emmerdale which is languishing in the lower six millions, imo poor. Unfortunate for ITV.

In which case, I humbly apologize for libelling Adrian Chiles who I like, actually, and who was an excellent presenter of The Apprentice: You're Fired. I really shouldn't believe everything I read in the papers and on the internet.

This actually makes Hunt's treatment of him even worse. No good reason for her to drop him and if Evans is uncomfortable in the presenting role... How was Evans last night? Stil looking uncomfortable? If he is, that will make Adrian grin. Though he's not having a good time of things himself at the moment what with the unfavourable reaction to Daybreak.

Chris Evans was actually brought in so Adrian could host The Ten Show on BBC2 which hasn't materialised since he left. It was supposed to be a topical debate show.