a 25 year recap?

To be fair, if you're going on 'days shows are set', then you'd have:

Christmas Eve
- Casualty
- Doctor Who

Christmas Day
- Holby City
- Rock and Chips (BBC PI only states 'Christmas 1960' though)
- The Royle Family

Boxing Day
nothing. My Family could go here though.

So how do people think BBc1 will do tonight as part of their big, but not as big as others, weekend?

With the poor weather,they really have no excuse for being below 10m anytime between 7 and 11pm tonight. It would be embarassing if a repeat of a film or a travel doc was to dent their numbers.

Alternatively on the Thursday, they could have aired Accidential Farmer (which I assume is a dud as it's had zero promotion whatsoever despite sounding promising and comic), or even held the Royal Variety over from last Thursday.

But if we wanted to point out minor tweaks and changes that would have vastly improved the BBC schedule this Christmas, we could spend all Christmas doing it!

I think the trailers say "Winners Weekend", George....

And yes, I'm sure Dara is dead certain to hold on to 10m+ for You're Hired after 10pm tonight when it usually gets 3m...

As for the supposedly massive ratings-building potential of "the weather", I see you have little faith in millions of apparently housebound folk wanting to spend their Sunday evening with your network enjoying a Harry Potter movie or a thrilling David Suchet travelogue?

Just found out that the Apprentice final is on tonight! Why on earth have they done that?!

Part of the Beeb's "Winners Weekend" (Strictly, Sports Personality, Apprentice), a phrase that appeared first on this forum!

As opposed to previous years, where filming happened months ago, Lord Sugar will only choose who he hires today. Stella is the 4/7fav.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/column...5875-22789375/

I suppose the "moderately sized weekend" didnt really have the right ring to it.

Just one thing though, dont winners usually finish first? Or is this the BBC school sports day.......

Oh fair enough. I knew it was live (or as live) I just thought it would be on a Wednesday as usual.

Funny you should mention this as I was thinking 10 million for both SPOTY and The Apprentice but do they really have that level of pull and engagement with the general public? I think if The Royal Variety Performance was on tonight it would have gotten 10-12 million easily.

Three shows this weekend will crown three winners. It does what it says on the tin!

Sounds like George has already cracked open the sherry...

I guess we can shortly compare the BBC1 and ITV1 shares for this weekend and last and see who won what. And if BBC1 wins this weekend and ITV1 last, whether BBC1's margin of victory this weekend is greater than ITV's last weekend.

Sound fair?

On any rational analysis, the finals of the best two "reality" shows and the still national-event SPOTY winners, beats hands down a 4 hour karaoke contest sing-off strung over 2 nights with little else of note supporting it.

Primetime shares - yes of course!


SPOTY stopped be relevant a long time ago. And Sir Alan's career in business is littered with failure. Do as I say, not what I do.

It seems to have had plenty of media coverage this week. Odd that, if it's ceased to be relevant.

I guess we'll see at 9.40am tomorrow how irrelevant it now is...

I also find ITV's schedule odd this Christmas as well, why have they decided to continue with the usual scheduling of Coronation Street (Monday, nothing until Thursday and then Friday, which is also New Year's Eve!) when they could have aired daily episodes instead to help other programmes

The only thing I'd change for the holiday period is move the Friday episode 2 to Wednesday at 19:30 probably. Apart from that, I wouldn't go and start throwing it over the shop when people's viewing techniques change for whatever reason starting probably from Friday.

George? Robbie?

How can you get so passionate about a TV channel? I dont understand it. I can get people getting passionate about a TV programme but not a channel.

Not trying to be rude, just looking for you to explain?

Why do you seem to be so passionate about BBC1/ITV and hate the other with such passion?

The sheer fact you have to take a shot at Strictly's ratings by harking back to times gone by tells me you think it did rather well.


He was probably writing his excuses and spin for the rest of the day.


As Dave01 posted, the overnight for Casualty was it's highest for nearly two years and last night's episode should timeshift better than 7.59m to become the highest rated of the year.

Indeed, and its what I and others pointed out if you check back. Though we were often (in my case wrongly) said to be seeking to defend Corrie. I watch both Corrie and EE every episode and appreciate they are very different shows that reach partly the same but also quite different audiences.

But it was very obvious that ITV put the empashis on a week long series of episodes in which the live episode was almost a minor afterthought. Whereas the BBC built everything around the live episode of EE.

So the ratings for the live episode were more focused with East Enders and the way the week held together as a much longer viewing committment was more important in the ITV thinking.

So the emphasis on a live episode ratings war means more to media commentators (and those on this thread) than in the real life sitiuation of these two shows.

Regarding the scheduling of Christmas Casualty.

Last year the programme was given a plum slot at 8pm on Christmas Sunday opposite a repeat of Midsomer Murders and posted pathetic overnights of 4.5m and failed to make BBC1's Christmas week top 3 in the officials.

That's why it's been scheduled opposite Emmerdale and Corrie - as a punishment for its p1ss-poor performance last Christmas.

Maybe because Saturday night television has improved from the dark days of The Premiership and clapped out shows like Blind Date and Stars in Their Eyes. Also the Doctor Who revival helped a completely dull BBC One Saturday schedule revive. While ITV1 has its massive bankers like TXF, BGT and IACGMOOH for autumn Saturdays, the BBC also has guaranteed hits like SCD, DW, Merlin and Casualty at other times.

I am forever staggered by the success of Dancing On Ice, it's the most derivative and cynical programme ever made and the line-ups are rubbish, if you're going to fill it with soap stars at least try and find sexy soap stars. People slagged off Strictly when Ricky Whittle was on it, but at least people fancy him, Dancing On Ice had Ste from Hollyoaks, who is hideously ugly. And when Dancing On Ice had a Widecombe-esque hopeless celebrity in Todd Carty, he was voted off after about five minutes! Even the name is crap. I simply cannot understand its appeal.


That's a highly impressive rating for Match of the Day given their two matches were incredibly unappealing fixtures, when they only had two matches in January they were lucky as Man U and Arsenal's matches survived, whereas here they only had Sunderland vs Bolton and Blackburn vs West Ham.


I really don't think the BBC1 schedules are that bad over Christmas, Christmas Day looks perfectly fine, I know it gives up at 10.30 but if they're cutting costs then that's expendable. Christmas Eve is virtually the same as last year, and Boxing Day has Antiques Roadshow, which is a popular show, 'stEnders (at 8.30, slap bang in the middle of the evening) and a massive drama. And rather Rock and Chips the centrepiece of an evening, albeit the 29th, than dumped at 10pm on Christmas Day or something. It's like Victoria Wood moaning last year, it was at 9pm opposite bugger all competition.

DOI isn't as good as SCD and typically has Z listers in its ranks, but does attract 8 million viewers and I can't see ITV ditching it yet as post X Factor their ratings go downhill.

DOI must be much more limited in its choice of celebrities than Strictly because dancing on ice skates must be considerably more difficult than "regular" dancing.

I still think that with a reduction in episodes and a bit of care Casualty can rate higher and do so more regularly. It could and should gave gotten 8 million on the overnights in my view based on the competition. And if it was the Casualty of old it would have done.

Casualty is more meh TV than must see TV.