Actually, this Christmas on ITV1 doesn't look bad at all.

There's rather too much plodding pensioner drama (Poirot and Marple), but some promising stuff too and a smattering of good movies too in decent slots.

I can well see me watching a fair bit of ITV1 this year given BBC1's somewhat perplexing schedule.


I hope BBC1 bigs up next weekend over the next 7 days.

In my view, the SCD Final, SPOTY and The Apprentice Final offers more than a 4 hour pad-fest to determine which of Cowell's non-entities gets the Christmas No 1 slot by murdering some other artist's workmanship.

"BBC1's Big Weekend of Winners" - SCD, SPOTY, Apprentice. That's something to get excited about!

I think you've got Strictly around right but over-rated The X Factor and Take Me Out terribly - but then no surprise there. I think The X Factor will claim around 13m and Take Me Out around 6m. The X Factor had an earlier start which may dent ratings while Take Me Out won't hold on to more that 50% of the audience.

I'm an ITV1/2/3/4 person anyway, but at xmas people seem to flock over to the other side. I like a bit of poirot & marple, missed a trick by not showing Nettles last Midsomer during xmas week

Tape-checked and other ratings from DS:

BBC One (inc. HD)
13:45- Doctors: 1.77m (22.2%)
19:00- The One Show: 5.15m (22.8%)
* 19:00 to 19:25 - 5.31m (23.5%)
19:30- A Question of Sport: 3.64m (15.2%)
* 19:25 to 19:55 - 3.31m (13.7%)
22:35- The Graham Norton Show: 3.77m (22.7%)
* 22:40 to 23:20 - 3.60m (22.3%)

BBC Two
19:30- Match Of The Day Live: 1.55m (6.2%)
22:00- The Stephen K Amos Show: 381,000 (1.7%)

ITV1 (inc. HD)
19:00- Emmerdale: 7.95m (35.2%)
* 19:00 to 19:25 - 7.83m (34.7%)
19:30- Coronation Street: 11.54m (47.9%)
* 19:30 to 19:55 - 11.99m (49.6%)
20:00- Countrywise Kitchen: 4.33m (17.8%)
* 20:00 to 20:25 - 3.94m (16.3%)
20:30- Coronation Street: 11.55m (45.0%)
* 20:30 to 20:55 - 12.32m (47.7%)

Channel 4 (inc. HD)
18:30- Hollyoaks: 943,000 (4.3%)
20:00- Come Dine with Me: 1.10m (4.4%)
* +1: 207,000 (0.8%)
21:00- The Event: 754,000 (3.0%)
22:00- Peep Show: 993,000 (4.5%)
22:30- Robert's Web: 650,000 (3.5%)

Five (inc. HD)
13:45- Neighbours: 714,000 (9.0%)
14:15- Home and Away: 274,000 (3.8%)
17:30- Neighbours: 1.45m (8.4%)
18:00- Home and Away: 815,000 (4.0%)
20:00- White Van Man: 476,000 (1.9%)
21:00- The Mentalist: 1.19m (4.7%)
22:00- Law & Order: SVU: 890,000 (4.4%)

BBC Three
22:00- EastEnders: 706,000 (3.2%)

E4
19:00- Hollyoaks: 396,000 (1.8%)

Fiver
18:30- Home and Away: 624,000 (2.8%)

Primetime Shares
ITV1 - 28.5%
BBC1 - 26.0%
BBC2 - 5.3%
C4 - 3.5% (+1: 0.6%)
C5 - 3.0%

Not sure which rating is worse, White Van Man or Stephen Amos. Tape checked average of Corrie's week is 12.6m (47.9%).

Got to be Stephen Amos - thats an embarassingly bad rating. What a disaster! Any old panel show repeat could pull triple that. Then again, he's a dismal 'comedian'...

And I think they've both got competition from another pathetic Channel 4 showing. The Event is a complete flop, Peep Show is limping, and Robert Webb's hideously derivative offering (I thought he was better than that) is failing too.

Plenty going wrong on Friday nights at the moment, then.

Channel 5 highest TV show was.. Neighbours!!!

The problem for BBC2 is that despite the critical mauling (even Punt and Dennis had a pop on the Radio 4 comedy The Now Show) and the abysmal ratings, they can't axe The Stephen K Amos Show or they're be accused of racism.

Absolutely delighted that The Event is flopping. I'm fed up with these pompous people who keep going on about how much better American drama is than British. As Ben Stephenson pointed out in the Radio Times a few months back, they have a very narrow range of dramas. They're incapable of doing one-offs or short serials. Everything has to run for 20+ episodes a year for at least 5 years.

There are too many of these high-concept dramas, they're all up their own arses and they all drag on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and.....



It used to be BBC1's, albeit in the days when BARB would add original screenings and same day repeats together into one big figure.

I think The X Factor's rating may be dragged down by the filler from 8.30. Same for Strictly, which had filler from around quarter to 7.

Take Me Out started at 21:04 tonight.

Some signs that X Factor did well: DS is beginning to crash and all 10 trends on Twitter in the UK are X Factor related.

No doubt that we'll get that report in a few hours of X shopping centre or Y motorway being dead, corroborating to high ratings.

The Sunday show is made up of so called "filler" though.

True, but it feels a bit different when it's attached to a main show. It's probably just me.

I feel the same.

The Sunday show is an entertainment show in its own right and it's always building up to the big final showdown so you sort of tolerate the stuff before it.

I don't think the final worked stripped across two nights last year and my opinion hasn't changed this year. Nobody really cares about who comes 4th so it's not a result I'm going to get excited about.

Interesting how each of the big three alternatives are suffering in different timeslots on Friday nights. Three massive turkeys one after another.

Which is the biggest flop? Well on the basis of this week's figures you'd have to say Stephen K Amos as it had the lowest share. But The Event was probably the most expensive and had by far the most promotion, so it really depends what you judge it on.

It's more advertising revenue though at the end of the day for ITV by having it across 2 days and 4 hours long.

The final performances show would rate better on a Sunday than it does on the Saturday. A lot of Christmas parties going on tonight.

Corrie week ended strongly with some near 50% shares, that's not to be sniffed it.

This would have been a better ITV1 schedule for the weekend...

Saturday 11th December
18:00 You've Been Framed!
19:00 This is JLS
20:00 Take Me Out
21:00 Life Stories: Cheryl Cole (R)

Sunday 12th December
19:00 The X Factor: Live Final
21:00 Sitcom Pilot (would easily win its slot, even if it was tripe)
21:25 Primeval Preview (3 minute preview of the new series, capturing the interest of 9m+ viewers)
21:30 The X Factor: Winner Announced (no need to be any longer than 60 min)
22:30 Piers Meets Elton

Only disadvantage is Take Me Out would lose its big lead-in. But to be honest I think that show was always going to do okay anyway, it rated well enough for its first series.

Loss in ad revenue could also be a problem but presumably with less spots available and so much demand they would be able to charge more per ad.

Gosh, really?

Oh I understand why they do it and why they'll continue to do it but I still think as a viewer it was better having it all on one night.

Like with Big Brother the more people in the final, the less of a final it becomes. I can see why after last year they might have thought it a good idea to have an extra act in the final - but to be honest my only issue last year was ditching the third place act on the Saturday. In theory that was the right thing to do, but in practice - as it does this year - it separates the two nights into two rounds, so takes the gloss off the final somewhat.

I'd have eliminated two acts last week, had three performances from the three acts tonight with the first elimination at the beginning of tomorrows show and then as last year a further couple of performances from the remaining two.


In the grand scheme of things I think 2x2 hours is absolutely fine for the final when you consider how the length of shows in earlier rounds has also increased over the last couple of years especially - they're basically only really adding 60 minutes on to the regular show length.

Question: Will the final three get to perform their winner's singles before an act is eliminated or will it just be the final two who get to perform theirs?

Final two as per usual is my guess. I see no reason why that will change this year.

They usually have the third place vote, then the final two sing their winner's song before the lines close for the last time.

Possibly, Christina's song was dire and the 4th place result was blindingly obvious. Even the judges made it abundantly clear that Cher was going.


The problem is that one hour less of the XF results means a loss of £6m! That's a big big disadvantage. Plus, I think the Saturday schedule is weak. I reckon even with an XF lift at the end, JLS won't do well and I'm quite pleased that TMO got an XF lead-in.

The current format isn't ideal. But I'm not sure what would be a perfect solution. 4 in the final means that tomorrows show has more content than last year. I'd expect the top 3 to perform (their audition song?) then an elimination and then the winners songs. The other thing is that to get Christina/Rihanna on the show for the duets, you have to give them performance slots and a Saturday elimination creates an opportunity for that.

I suspect the BBC1 schedulers paid too much attention to their former boss Jay Hunt when she said she wasn't bothered about ratings on Saturday nights (or any other nights if you look at her scheduling). There are millions of people who do not watch TXF and the BBC should be providing them with a decent alternative other than snooker on BBC2. Same tonight (Sunday) with repeats of Antiques Road Show and Gentley.

XFactor 11.12.2010 peaks 14.2m (does not include HD)

HD averaged 1m peaked 1.2m.