So why are the press reporting it got 500,000 last week then? 800k is 60% higher than 500k.

BBC Breakfast peaked at 2.1 million, Daybreak at 1.1 million.So despite claims from the ITV press office Daybreak has not built at all on the GMTV audience of 820,000 when it finished.

Jake, we all know that you can't stand every non-BBC channel, and ITV in particular, but this has been Daybreak's best week since mid-September, so whilst the ratings are still too low, there's definitely been an improvement, no matter how you try and spin it to try to make it look awful.

ITV aren't saying that, ITV are saying that the drop between GMTV autumn 2009 and Daybreak is smaller than previous year on year drops and that their audience is up on GMTV with men and younger people.

The media bias against Daybreak has been glaringly obvious this week. The figures haven't been reported daily and no stories have been run. It's performing fine now and is getting more or less the GMTV audience as the novelty of other channels wears off and viewers are slowly returning to ITV1. I still think that the 6-7am hour will be the weak link for Daybreak's ratings and perhaps it could be worth resurrecting the Newshour to save it dragging down 7-8.30am. It's definitely out of the danger zone for now.

I am not sure what the BBC will do with Outcasts, I fear it may come across as too much like Survivors, and Friday is not a good night to launch a new drama.

How about Monday night, replacing Spooks (in the long run)

The premier of Outcasts is scheduled for 5 December on BBC America according to some sources. Is it likely that it will air in the US first?

Daybreak can't even pull the extra viewers in when the BBC is on strike. hardly a ringing endorsement.

Anything for the soaps yet?

That would be quite fitting.

Like M&W, C&B have tanked after their big money move from BBC1 to ITV.

Obviously Maydaybreak wasn't helped by the BBC managing to air news during the Breakfast slot, but you would still have expected a sizeable chunk to give C&B a try. They clearly did not.


The Guardian-reading, homous-eating, iPad waving, leftie liberals who run television and assume that everyone else thinks like them and shares their passions?


Good BBC1 numbers, particularly if BBC1HD figures are excluded. HIGNFY and Reggie making slight gains and round figures of 5m and 3m sound better than 4.8m and 2.9m. Excellent result for EE too.

Do we know yet if any of the BBC1 overnights reported since Wednesday include HD or not? We need to find out, obviously...


Utter madness to air 10 top-name Jimmy McGovern-inspired dramas at 2.15pm!

Particularly when your 9pm line up regularly comprises guff like Turn Back Time and The Young Ones.

Their ratings were still quite good when they went to ITV as were Mike Yarwood's when he moved. Eric & Ernie suffered because Eddie Braben didn't join them straightaway and there was Eric's failing health to contend with. Plus they were getting older so they couldn't do as much physical comedy as they did when they were younger and at the Beeb.

There has indeed been a media campaign against Daybreak from before its launch, spearheaded by the Murdoch press and Daily Mail group who both have their own agendas.But the public perception of the programme has clearly been it is a poor substitute for GMTV and many viewers don't like Chiles or Bleakley.It seems that 800,000 is about the optimum audience for a breakfast show on ITV as the gain has not been reflected in any loss of audience for BBC Breakfast.

Looks like we're in for a wait for last night's numbers.

Those dramas were commissioned specifically for BBC Daytime and it's good to see something different in the afternoons. McGovern's new drama Accused starts soon and that looks rather good.

don't recall any such "campaign". IIRC the actual press launch had a fairly favourable response all round.
Christine in particular is right up the Mail's street.
sadly, the reviews were bad once it actually started broadcasting and it's kind of snowballed from there.

I think they also got lumbered with weeknight slots because they signed for Thames, and because LWT "owned" Saturday and Sunday nights, they wouldn't let a Thames show air in a prized Saturday night slot. Even when Christmas Day fell on Saturdays, their annual special had to air on a weekday - much to the BBC's amusement I suspect.

Then again, right through the 1980s and into the early 90s, shows could still pull 17m+ at 7pm on a dark autumn/winter Tuesday...

I was thinking from a ratings perspective, not a political perspective.


I imagine they include HD as BARB is not reporting BBC1 HD separately. (which probably caused the delay in Wednesday's ratings)

Yes, I'd assume so too. But I asked because Bushmills had specifically said the Thursday BBC1 overnights did not include HD.

That's so true. But back then couldn't shows from other regions like Yorkshire or Granada air on any day? It was LWT that couldn't be on weekdays and Thames on weekends. Do you know when that rule changed?

The campaign consisted of daily reporting of the falling ratings (fact), alleged ''panic'' at ITV Towers and (allegedly) desperate attempts to change the format, most recently a claim in The Sun that the title Daybreak was going to be dropped (which appears to be untrue).There was also the claim - difficult to verify - that the Chiles/Bleakley ''chemistry'' had disappeared. What one can say as a fact is two months after the launch Daybreak has not improved on the GMTV audience and the BBC Breakfast audience has actually risen (yesterday being a ''blip'' due to the strike).

Unless you blame ITV for Erics heart attack? That was the main reason why they didnt reach the same heights on ITV.

I have a DVD of their Thames shows and they're not that bad. Their very first ITV show in 1978 and the Christmas show that year was written by Barry Cryer & John Junkin and they're rather good. They also helped write the 1972 Christmas show and that has some good moments.

Eric had his first heart attack in November 1968 when they were with the BBC. The filming schedule was greatly relaxed after his recuperation and sometimes they would come in for a day and only record a few minutes.They moved to the BBC (from ATV) because they could make their shows in colour on BBC2, ITV not having colour then.

so the campiagn began after the show started. initially you said it was before, which implied they were doomed from the outset.
rather than the simple truth. which is that the product turned out to be not very good, so not many people bought it.
the papers may have been unfair since, but let's not give ITV an easy get-out.

Probably not the principal reason why they moved though.

Michael Grade who was their agent at the time was quoted saying that Bill Cotton offered them quite a bit more money to come to the Beeb and then Michael did the deal (much to Uncle Lew Grade's displeasure as he was head of ATV at the time!)

There's even an in-joke on the BBC deal on one of their introductory sketches with Eric saying he heard a voice from the other side, it was Lew Grade but the money was no good!

Sorry, if this seems slightly out of place, as the thread has moved on to Daybreak, but in reply to Brekkie's comment on previous page re XF Yes ITV/Syco may have done a deal but with Simon doing XF US, i would think that all the deal has done is to secure the futre of XF and BGT, and still leaves very much open the possibility of a November start for XF 2011.

On the subject of Daybreak, ITV Towers must have been living in cloud cuckoo land, to have believed that premere ratings around 1.4m would maintain, even if Daybreak was successful, as there was always going to be a drop off