I'm surprised at how well The One Show did against Coronation Street!

Was interesting to see the Grand Designs revisit last night as it was one from the first series filmed in 1999 - and how things like open plan living and under floor heating which are pretty much the norm in all property shows now were considered daring and experimental just a decade or so ago.

I suspect Phil and Kirsties Perfect Christmas will collapse tonight! Difficult to predict Corrie as it could be anywhere between 12-18m really - I'm going to go for around 15.2m, peaking around 17m. I think it'll at least beat Saturday's X Factor too.

I think some people thought Matt Baker would be on last night but wasnt.I know I got caught out.

Someone at The Sun will have made the story up to sell papers. Most normal people can see that. It's how tabloid papers work.

The Greater Manchester Police have denied any knowledge and said that it is a misinterpretation of Granada employing private security guards.

I read a week or so ago locally that ITV were concerned that people would deliberately try to cause mischief (as in idiots or student protestors) as everyone in Manchester knows where the set is and that millions will be watching it live. And there are streets very close to it that cannot be closed off so pretty easy to disrupt. The Granada staff were thinking that someone might try letting off fireworks from somewhere nearby to spoil the mood of the episode.

As all that was discussed in the past week locally it seems far more plausible as the source of the 'misinterpretation' in the Sun.

Yes its maybe taking things a bit far to read the rest of the article for a thousand quid, but it is interesting.

I read in MediaGuardian that Mark Thompson is targeting Sports/Film/series acquisition for further cuts so the BBC's position seems a faltering one. Though there is still this thread that the BBC should target its resources on "event" tv(ie bringing the nation together) seemingly including sports. Quite what this means for the sports portfolio is hard to fathom, but presumably retaining rights like MOTD will be all that much harder if C5 is going to be a big player.

As for Champions League, is there any suggestion that ITV is less keen than before? I would rather doubt it-given that they took great risks to get both FA Cup/England and CL on board.Does Channel 5 have the financial clout? And it does seem that ITV and UEFA have a good relationship-almost a love-in.

I was too-though when you think about it-only a bit more than a sixth of the nation actually watched C/S. There is obviously a huge scope to bring other people together-its just getting the right ingredients.

Yeah, cracking rating for yesterday's Corrie considering it aired in an unusual early slot. It looks like this week overall will rate better than EE's anniversary week overall, although I still think EE's live episode will have more viewers than Corrie's.

Considering fewer than 2m were watching ITV between 21:45-22:00, I was expecting a higher average for The Apprentice (closer to 8m than 7m). The lack of press coverage definitely seems to be hitting it but I read that the next series will air in Spring so hopefully lack of press shouldn't be an issue next time.

She won't.

A few more bits from the ITV Press Centre:

Primeval episode 2 airs on Sunday 2 January at 7pm. I wonder whether it'll be on Saturdays or Sundays from the following week. Meanwhile, Trevor McDonald's Secret Mediterranean begins on Tuesday 4 January at 8pm.

Surprised at Primeval, they're going to burn through those quickly.

And I expect Trev McDonald at 8pm, Biggest Loser at 9pm on Tuesdays. The Tuesday night flop zone looks to live on.

that second Primeval ep is odd

Wonder if it will beat EE's ? I'm not sure at all, too hard to say although i don't think there has been that much hype compared to EE but still... dunno...

I suspect Primeval will be just once a week after the first week, but the question is whether it'll be on Saturday or Sunday.

Biggest Loser on Tuesdays seems about right so it does seem like the flopzone will continue although they'll be OK for week one with Above Suspicion.

I think it will rate similar to the EE live episode. Probably no more than 500k in it, so somewhere between about 15m-16m.

I do think EE will edge it but could go either way.

At the X Factor press conference today, Simon Cowell said that Syco/ITV "might be announcing something fairly soon as I think there should be another music show".

I know Syco have a lottery style show in development but wasn't aware of them possibly making another "music show" - the last one they launched I think was 'Grease is the Word' which flopped. I wonder if it could be another musical-based show but this time have Andrew Lloyd Webber onboard, who's featuring in a couple of ITV documentaries next year too.


I think it'll be Saturdays due to DOI/WAH returing on Sundays the following week (it seems), although I suppose Sundays could be possible if they split DOI across the weekend, like:

Sat- 19:00: TV Burp, 19:30- DOI, 21:00- Take Me Out
Sun- 19:00: Primeval, 20:00- DOI Results, 21:00- Wild at Heart

Saying that, it does say on the tickets website for DOI it's returning on Sundays.

He also talked about the new music show with the BBC, he said it would need 'a lot of money' but wouldn't really expand on what type of show it would be, sounds more like a chart countdown style show than a musical based one.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainm...medium=twitter

Oh, I think this is the show he was referring to in that quote I posted. Didn't realise it was going to be for the BBC, just assumed it would be for ITV.

Oh sorry I phrased it badly, the interview was with the BBC, I presume the show will be on ITV.

Just a small chance that the extensive coverage of this evening's violent student protests in London could take the shine off Corrie's figures.

Hard to say how popular the coverage will be in this hour as activity seems to be dying down a bit now compared to earlier but it's certainly been a busy news evening with Charles and Camilla's car attacked.

I suspect it'll be more of a chart countdown show like others have said, but I won't be surprised if they do produce a new Lloyd Webber musical show for ITV, particularly as, like you say, he's done some documentaries for ITV to be shown next year. I suspect it'd have a revamp of the format from Over The Rainbow, and probably a bigger budget too.


I really like that schedule, but I doubt they'll split DOI across the weekend unfortunately as I think they'd have announced it by now. Although I can't see anything on the ticket website about it being on Sundays, and the dates aren't up yet. Btw, I assume you're looking at the same one as I am, SRO Audiences, who are apparently now handling DOI instead of Applause Store.

I suspect ITV value the Champions League certainly more than the FA Cup rights, and possibly more than the England rights too (considering they seem to be bundled with the FA Cup).

As for the BBC - I'm sure they'll still competitively bid for Premiership highlights, but considering the ratings there is little justification in going for the live Championship games again - and that might mean the Football League highlights are dumped too, along with the League Cup. Personally I never felt the BBC should have bid for those rights anyway - and certainly with an even tighter budget that money could be better spent elsewhere as far as sport is concerned.


Really though the news channels rarely top 100,000 even at the best of times, so I doubt any dent would be too hard.

What a wasted opportunity though not sticking a live show on ITV2 following the episode - I'd have certainly switched over tonight.

Everyones favourite barometer of ratings.... Twitter has Corrie as 1st, 5th and 9th Worldwide trends. Aswell as 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th. 7th and 8th trends!

Just letting you know thats all!

Something like EE's lots of younger people watch, - but Corrie obvioulsy normally has an older audience and may be sterotying but twitter you'd think would be more tech savey youngsters.

Fantastic tonight - almost forgot it was live really, it was that well acted, directed etc.

Apparently it also brought down the forum's is that right?

I still EE LIVE will outrate it considerably but Corrie was cracking tonight.

So good, and the actors coped with it extremely well. So much so they're being accused of not being live at all. So job well done.

For about 30 seconds.