This made me laugh:


That, yesterday.

This, today:


Amazing X Factor ratings, there's just no stopping it I'm afraid!

Countryfile maintains nearly 8million, wow!
Also excellent for Strictly, a 2010 series high and its just beaten last year's grand finale of 10.42m. What a contrast in the 9pm slot, although it is good alternative BBC programming.


Huge week-on-week surge for the X-Factor, and over 500k ahead of the big Jedward episodes last year. Next week will be interesting as it has a 15minute clash with the Strictly results show.
Also I think that Downton Abbey rating is exceptional given the 90min run time last night.

Obviously a phenomenal audience figure for The X Factor yesterday, gripping half of the available audience in the 8pm hour. The Xtra Factor also benefitted as expected from the controversial results show and rallied to what looks like a series high.

Elsewhere from the juggernaut last night, Downton Abbey put in an extremely solid performance, increasing its audience for its extended final episode and maximising that lead-in, contributing further to a super Sunday for ITV1.

Countryfile and Strictly continued to punch well above their weight earlier in the evening, with yet more impressive numbers for those. On BBC Two meanwhile, James May's Man Lab doesn't look like being anywhere near as big of a hit as Top Gear, and didn't seem to benefit much from a weak BBC One audience in that slot. (sometimes when BBC One is low at 9pm, BBC Two gets a boost, but not last night)

On Channel 4, The Secret Millionaire continued to perform very well, although programmes either side of it were low with the E4 first look denting Desperate Housewives's potential.

And finally, to Channel 5, where another afternoon and evening of superbly selected movies continued to draw big audiences. The war film did very well in an extremely challenging slot, and Shallow Hal pulled in a solid audience at 9pm. Even the late film did well (with that guy out of FlashForward that had no FlashForward) achieving a very decent share. It would be interesting to see how The Aristocats performed earlier in the day, to see if that too topped 1m which I suspect it did.

SENSATIONAL for XF and Downton. I don't think anyone can put a bad spin on those figures. 10m for a brand new non crime drama on ITV1 is amazing, but for it to be 2m up from its launch episode is astonishing. This has to be the success of the year for ITV. The lead in has definitely helped, but we all know a lead in isn't everything and the series could have easily averaged around 6m. Almost a 17m peak for a show only midway through the live shows is amazing too-I didn't think we'd be seeing an average of 15m after things seemed to be leveling out. But with controversial acts Katie & Wagner still in the competition, strong guest performers lined up, talented performers Matt, Rebecca, One Direction & Mary still in the competition making the show still wide open-I reckon the show hasn't quite peaked yet.

1.8m for Xtra Factor-that's a bit more like it and The Only Way Is Essex has been a quiet hit for ITV2-hardly losing any of its original audience and I reckon a recomission is on the way.

CH5 did well to have its primetime films above 1m and Secret Millionaire seems to be the only thing holding up CH4's very weak Sunday schedule, and even that is below par.

Very good for contryfile.and come dancing. Ok for the X Factor but not SENSATIONAL or phenomenal I thought it would get more.

Exactly... with Waissel a cert for next week's chop, people will tune in again.

Added to which Westlife, JLS (huge now), and Take That with Robbie LIVE for the first time in over a decade... we could see astronomical figures next week.

Simple really. Shut BBC4, take all the BBC1 type stuff off BBC2 and replace with BBC4 programmes.

Are you joking?


The first 15 minutes clash with Strictly as X Factor is on for 75 minutes, so the average will end up significantly lower. Nothing to stop a bigger peak though.

[quote=D.M.N.;45479519]Are you joking?

NO I AM NOT JOKING. last year it got 19 million peek. This year 16 Million. Now that is 3 million less then last year. that is very bad. Simon Cowell will not be happy.

[quote=buffywoman;45479619]
That was the final..

Amazing ratings for Sunday.

A talented potential top 4 might make it wide open, but does that automatically translate into higher viewing figures? I think it might run into choppy waters when it gets to the last couple of weeks myself as there seems to be a a lot of people that like two or more of those acts this year, and won't care who wins. That's a recipe for a disappointing finale (especially from a voting perspective) unless they can somehow keep someone with a bit of an 'edge' like Cher in. I don't doubt it's possible for them to manipulate it somehow to make this happen.

Absolutley Fantastic Ratings for The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing.

15m for a results show! I can't believe the judges chose katie over treyc though. that was such a fix!

SCD is amazing though.

If they were tired of it they'd not keep reading it. DS is absurd for that. The showbiz forum is full of people who appear to despise showbiz and entertainment news of any form. The X Factor forum is full of people who appear to hate the show and everything and anyone associated with it (apart from Dannii Minogue). I'm tired of reading about the referee thing and hearing about it so I simply changed the radio station and didn't bother reading about the whole thing after a few days.

Can you imagine if there was an "entertainment news" section on the national news every night? If you put together everyone who engages with the entertaimment industry each week - through television, film, music etc then you've got a far higher number than sport. Yet there's a certain snobbery around them being in newspapers or on news broadcasts. I can understand that - in comparison to "real news" it's simply not important. Yet that's not applied to sport. The importance of sport as "news" is ridiculously over inflated in this country. And I say that as someone who regularly goes to matches and watches football on TV.


Manchester United vs Chelsea in the 2008 Champions League final had an official rating of 10.05m. Now throw in a few million more for watching in pubs and you're talking similar numbers. I doubt a premier league match would get that unless it was a deciding match.

The X Factor lends itself to tabloid coverage because it's "all in one". There is one "match" a week that 17m might be watching. Short of the World Cup, that simply isn't the case for football.

Taken overall, you've got two things which get huge amounts of media coverage because they both get huge amounts of viewers (when combined anyway), internet traffic and so on. Neither of them are really important compared to "serious news".

Around 30 million were watching tv last night - getting 50% of viewers is commendable but not sensational. I am sure the number crunchers here could find other shows with such an audience share.

If a viewer had to choose between antiques roadshow or XF a live show then the majority will choose the latter as the former is not exactly must see tv, it has been around for decades.

Great for DA didn't expect the ratings to climb so much throughout the run. Top rating for Countryfile as well.

Sunday tv here is still pulling in the viewers - but 50% of people still choose to do others things with their time.

Yeh, I'd predict a bigger peak next week but lower average, Strictly viewers will likely watch the end of the show first, which is actually airing results at that time rather than turn over to watch the pre-results filler on X-factor.

Of course one benefit to a bigger peak at the end of the show next week will be the epic lead-in to I'm A Celebrity. And with no Top Gear to contend with and low rating factual on BBC1 it should do very well.

I don't know of other shows that can command a 50% share nowadays.

That's probably at 70%-ish share of commercial TV - its massive.

But sport is mostly reserved for the back pages and its own dedicated section, surely it's only when it crosses over to the front pages that coverage of it becomes OTT?

If The X Factor's coverage was mostly reserved for a "middle page" nice and easy to avoid inside the paper, then it wouldn't be a problem either. I think seeing it on the front pages every day for 3 months is what really gets people's goat, including mine.

Formula 1 races can come close when they are on early. (For example, the Chinese Grand Prix back in April won a 47% share across over three hours from 7am)

That's more to do with the issue of entertainment news which has no fixed place in the papers. They're obviously not going to put it in the middle for the same reason that they wouldn't put sport in the middle.

I generally don't mind sport being on the front pages anyway. I know it's not as important as politics, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to read about it!

But it's obviously working for them.

Incredible for X Factor and Downton Abbey. That's more like it.

BBC report Downton Abbey was watched by 10.1 million, I assume that 9.9m is the tape-checked figure.

It also says it peaked at 11.4 million - I'm not sure if this is a 15 minute or 5 minute figure, because figures on the BBC site I've seen in the past tend to be 15 minute figures?

50% of 30m = 15m
50% of 2m = 1m

Which is better?

why do you think there were 30m watching? Probably 5-6m tune in because of the X Factor and would not otherwise be watching tv at all. So dont just think that there are 30m automatically available on a Sunday night to watch tv.

X-Factor pulls so many extra viewers to the TV though. 30million watching TV at the same time is very very unusual - (normally it would be around 23-25m, perhaps 26m for a Sunday). The more new viewers it pulls to the TV, its share will rise at a lower rate, if it was pulling existing TV viewers then its share would rise more.

Even back in the days of 4 channel television were there any shows capable of bumping up the total simultaneous TV audience to 30million + on a weekly basis? (I don't know the answer to that but would be interested if there were)

X-Factor ratings never cease to amaze me.

With the whole guff that went on the show, do you think we will see people saying screw this show and not watch through protest or will people come back for more?

Probably the latter I suppose.