That made me laugh out loud, so naughty!

I agree ref Apprentice. Its forced late year scheduling has really pepped up Wednesdays for BBC1.
Its nice to know that the SPOTY award still means something. Steeped in history, the move to big arenas has given it a new leese of life and for me its still a thrilling moment to see the winner get the award to that old familliar music. Glad it is to others too.

for all you X-Factor fans

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDrKq...eature=related

Mitch Benn is a geninus.

Channel 5 have their own special programme on the adverse weather, Britain's Big Freeze: A Five News Special tonight at 7pm.

No snow here in North Warwickshire yet today, though there could be later in the week.

Dont these people watch Coronation Street too?

if this winter goes on much longer, Corrie will loose 90% of its auidence.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...each-week.html

Emmerdales Demos are even worse


You don't get out much do you James?

Is that the series where passengers go to Heathrow to get high in more ways than one?

One quick comment about the Your Fired/Hired sister show, I actually dont think Dara O'Brien is as good as Adrian Chiles. Last night the banging on about the shape of the bottle ended up like a conversation in a semi drunk sixth form common room. The runner up just ended up a bewildered spectator at all the forced laughter. Your Hired was too long imo.

I think Winners Weekend on BBC underperformed somewhat. Apprentice down on it's summer finale on the coldest night of winter, SPOTY given a decent run by a film repeat, and SCD although very good still some 4m off the pace of the XF finale.
I expected all to be bigger.

According to one of the ticket websites, ITV are making a series out of this format

http://www.holdontoyourseat.tv/

Which is apparently very popular on French TV.

Is there no Krypton Factor 2011 ?

Going back a bit, but the ideas of a Thursday Casualty

Or start the BBC News at 10, at 2150. ITV News is at 2215 Thursday, so the 2200 junction isn't as important as normal, and the 1930/2000/2100 junctions will be more important


Agree. But is the festive period really the best time to schedule heavyweight current affairs?


Indeed. Where I live there was a light dusting on Saturday night and thats been it. It was far worse three weeks ago. While the airport disruption seems to have been worse compared to the earlier snow, is it just a case of London based news organisations devoting more resources when there is bad snow were they are? There was no news specials when large parts of Eastern England had the worse snow for years and conditions like this:

the gender pronouns are all over the place, sounds like its only worth taking part if you are that champion.

In many parts there's been up to 8inch of snow and the temps are going to fall alot tonight so the snow its going to freeze
with more snow predicted tommorow and throughout the week.

Even BBC news 24 went to different parts like Bath,Cheltenham,Swindon and the coltswolds because it's been so bad
Many have said this is the worst snow they have seen for ages and thats going back years and year

I agree, it will be a simulcast of the news channel featuring the same reports and the same links to reporters on OBs at Heathrow etc that featured in the Six O'Clock News an hour earlier.

There is also the question of why are they doing it now, is it because the snow is in London and Heathrow?, rather than when half of Scotland and the North East were cut off 2 weeks ago?

We know. It was like that up north a fortnight ago. We never lost our snow.

It is the case the media only get interested when a bit of snow falls over London.

I wonder if there is any chance of Sky trying for the Daily Show? Might be a good fit for Sky Atlantic, a show with relatively few viewers but undoubtedly a cult following.

The north is more used to this weather and i've seen the north snow in the media
Manchester and Blackpool featured in most of the papers yesterday and the news covered it.
As i said going back last year much of the country was full of snow yet here where i live we had sun shine and rain.
Even the snow Earlier this year isn't as much as now

I think there is two big problems with this.

I cant see the BBC wanting to have a different time for the news at 10pm, looked what happened to ITV news, when it was called news at when. The only exception being live events and one offs. People turn over at 10pm, and expect to see the news.

As for starting Eastenders later, i dont see this as possible. The BBC have a news bulletin that seems to always start at around 7.57. It would also know other programmes out of the natural 8pm and 9pm junctions.

The only option i can see is a 10 minute filler at 9.50pm before the news.

The only reason there's a news special at 7.30 tonight is because BBC1 has a gaping hole in its schedule. According to my copy of Radio Times BBC South East, East and Midlands (and presumably some of the northern regions too) were showing Deadly 60 which is a bloody children's programme.

Oh, and Wednesday's Panorama is about supermarkets so not really heavyweight current affairs. Ties in with their 8pm food hour

Todays newspapers have Deadly 60 listed too

Quite. I'm in my thirties, and I can't ever remember BBC1 airing a normal Monday night Panorama in the same week as Christmas, let alone a 9pm special on the 22nd and a drama repeat in a plum 9pm slot the night before Christmas Eve.

Or to have run the Ten O'Clock News in full until the day before Christmas Eve. Newsnight finished for xmas last Friday.

It's a bizarre schedule, but then the whole BBC schedule is riddled with absurdities anyway.

Was the first series a lower rating series than the last series of Pop Idol? It's odd that Pop Idol was a relatively short lived show, as it was a big success in its day, and that the X Factor took four series to really get into its stride. I did hear of ITV considering a revival of Pop Idol in 2007, but as TXF has soared into the stratosphere and Pop Idol is largely forgotten now, this suggestion was never heard again.

I suspect a decent bit of the y-o-y growth is simply down to better scheduling as the Saturday shows didn't face Strictly this year, and perhaps even more importantly the early weeks of this year's series were scheduled better than they were in 2009, with the 7:30pm slot working well and allowing the show to build it's audience nicely through the auditions/bootcamp/judges houses which provided a fantastic base on which it could build upon for the live shows, which it did. The fact that it didn't tail off towards the end like it did in 2009 will also have helped. Whilst it would have grown even if the scheduling remained exactly as it did in 2009, I think it would have been to a slightly lesser extent.

I agree that if they can minimise the decline to <10% then ITV will be very pleased as after all that would put it in line with 2009's series which rated brilliantly. It's got a long way to fall before it hits even 2007 levels, and those were considered brilliant at the time (and would still be very good although I suspect the budget would be cut a little). It seems as though all the judges, including Cowell, will be returning next year so I can't see them being worried at all about it, as they seem to have nailed it this year.

BGT is much more in need of attention right now, and this upcoming series will be crucial for its future. I'm certain that Cowell returning for the live shows is a safety net just in case the new panel doesn't go down well. If it goes down well without him then I doubt he'll bother appearing at all in 2012, but if it doesn't go well he'll probably be back full time. The reports on here from people who will be in the audience for the auditions in a few weeks will be very interesting and I think will give us our first indication of how the new panel will go down (although admittedly it may take a few days for the new judges to settle in so making a judgement after the first day may not be wise).

I disagree. If we insist on comparing every show to XF, there's going to be a lot of dissappointments.

Strictly achieved by far its best two ratings ever. Sports Personality was the highest its been in the best part of a decade. The Apprentice might be described as slightly underwhelming based on last year - though following the ratings trend of the whole series it actually did quite well. All in all, I think the BBC will be very satisfied customers with how the weekend went.