I guess it depends how much BBC1 you watch - I've seen all the trailers more than once except Upstairs Downstairs which I haven't seen at all.

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Miranda performed superbly but I'm not sure how it'd do on BBC1. It seems too quirky, too 'different' - but then I guess the same was said about Little Britain! The soaps all had excellent nights and I guess Come Rain or Shine did ok, but I personally thought it'd do better.

The Top Gear team seem to not worry about the length of their shows anymore. They just produce them as they wish and trust that BBC2 will let them.

I don't know that Top Gear will inflict too much damage on Upstairs Downstairs, but it could certainly take the sting out of EastEnders right after the Christmas Day boost. It's strange because on the whole, scheduling across BBC One and Two has been quite good this Christmas. This week before has essentially been given over to Two's offerings, while One concentrates the big shows between Christmas and New Year. Christmas Eve strikes me as a really strong, contrasting offering with comedy on one side and the ghost story on the other.

And as you mentioned Upstairs, Downstairs - I have noticed that the BBC seem to be pushing this in a very big way. It got the prime post-Strictly trailer slot on Saturday night, and it seems to be everywhere in the newspaper TV sections. The one complimentary thing you can say about the Christmas schedules is that unlike in some past years, they're taking advantage of it to give new shows the best possible chance - most notably Upstairs Downstairs, Come Fly with Me and The Magicians.


Thats probably a good idea. I did wonder whether they'd want to keep it pre-watershed but the only available slot for that would be Wednesday at 7.30. And I always feel that slot is a bit vulnerable to ITV soaps or events. Thinking of scheduling options does only serve to highlight what a difficult job the BBC have in giving anything a sporting chance before 9pm.

And that difficulty, of course, comes about because of ITV desperately stifling the prospects of the BBC coming up with successful new shows (eg, mainstream pre-watershed comedy and light entertainment during the week) by wrapping EmFm and CoroSt around every episode of EE.

BBC1 had big slots to offer new comedy etc an EE lead-in on Mondays at 8.30 and Thursdays at 8 and 8.30; as well as Friday 8.30pm.

All now gone.

Shame - and the viewers suffer, thanks to ITV Bosses.

The annual BBC Christmas 'lets schedule late': BBC1 and BBC2 running behind schedule.

Both Holby and Top Gear in the tape-checked overnights will have the 20:00 to 20:05 period removed. Top Gear is just starting at 20:03, Holby started at 20:04. In Top Gear's case, it means it won't finish till near 21:20.

I can only assume Accidental Farmer is only 55 minutes long and has been dragged into a 60 minute slot.

I agree with this 100%.

I wasn't aware that ITV was supposed to leave slots free to allow BBC1 to develop hits?

Maybe BBC1 should reduce the run of Holby City so ITV can have a better run on a Tuesday night?

There is also early Sunday evening which is strangled by BBC1 airing Countryfile and Antiques Roadshow all year round, this was the slot that Last of the Summer Wine used to use for years

Also early on a Saturday evening used to be a comedy slot, but is now mostly used for Total Wipeout repeats

Why does all pre-watershed comedy have to air pre-watershed anyway? If they had kept the Friday night comedy slot they would have had to commission 100 half hour shows to fill 9-10pm per year, they are often incapable of even that, resorting to Live at the Apollo repeats far too often. Miranda could go there.

If they were good enough it wouldnt be a problem. I dont like to be churlish at Chrismas but this is just sour grapes.

I watch BBC1 quite a bit actually but it's not just BBC1 i mean BBC in general and you'd expect Radio 1 to plug some of the Christmas shows.

Is BBC1 running late or was EastEnders just longer tonight as it finished bang on 8:00pm and they still added in the News update where as on a Tuesday EastEnders usually ends at 7:55-7:57

Running late. EastEnders started at 19:31, not the usual 19:27.

Thanks

I was going to make a comment along these lines. They put After You've Gone out on Sunday night, and it bombed cos it was shit! The first thing the BBC needs to do if it wants to have comedy hits is improve the quality.

The BBC need to revive Comedy Playhouse. With 13 episodes in a series they might just find one or two sitcoms worth spending our licence fee on.

Quality comedy will come through - as in Gavin And Stacey, Outnumbered and Miranda.


To me the comedy Miranda most resembles is Up Pompeii. She breaks the fourth wall to the same degree as Frankie Howerd did. Up was also quirky and "different", but they still put it out on primetime BBC1.

They should put Miranda out on BBC1 on Thursday at 8pm. She did well against Corrie so she should also cope against the less-popular Emmerdale. Last night the stuffy starchy The Nativity managed 5.2m against Emmerdale. No reason Miranda couldn't do that at 8pm on Thursdays with a EE lead-in and if she did we'd all be saying how well she's done.

Interesting you say this considering Miranda managed to hit 3m+ on BBC2 against Coronation Street. There is enough of a non-soap audience available to develop a hit opposite it. Look at the success of The One Show - maybe if BBC1 hadn't plastered that daily across the schedule some shows may have managed to get a news lead in against a weaker Emmerdale?

As Andy has said - it's not ITV's job to make life easy for BBC1. Then again, I do agree the soaps should be cut back a bit.

I have to admit I very rarely listen to the radio, except at breakfast. I would've thought the BBC would push the Christmas schedule as much as they could.

So, just in case DS updates first in the morning, the following are the BBC tape-checked slots:

BBC One
20:05 to 21:00 - Holby City
21:05 to 22:00 - Accidental Farmer (presumably 22:00)

BBC Two
18:35 to 20:00 - Top of the Pops 2
20:05 to 21:15 - Top Gear

Not too bothered whether auditions air Sat/Sun or just once a week, but I definately think Britain's Got Talent could get a weekend of shows out of a new "boot camp" phase, especially if they use Simon missing the auditions as an excuse to introduce it, bringing him back into the show before the lives.

As for the final - I also think they could get a weekend of shows out of that. Have the ten acts perform on the Saturday, then a two-hour finale on the Sunday in which the top three are revealed and perform again, padded out with guests and previous winners etc.


The ratings of Come Rain or Shine suggest otherwise - it would have got at least a million less in a 9-11pm slot IMO.


Usually I'm against BBC1 stealing from BBC2, but it's got to at least be considered. If the BBC do though they need to give the first two series another outing rather than just launching straight into the third.


I doubt it would affect Strictly at all. The biggest problem now is Mr Cable's own stupidity has pretty much given a free pass to Rubert Murdoch now Jeremy *unt makes the decision, which long term is not good news for the BBC.


Exactly - if anything it should be the other way round (although despite it solving a problem for ITV, I'd hate to see Corrie find itself in the Tues 8pm hour as that'll leave only Wednesday with a soap-free pre-watershed hour during the week).

I have to ask: As Accidental Farmer is a load of crap, why have the BBC Scheduling Dimwits chosen to burn it off over Christmas and not in July or August?

Presumably the Corrie production team are stretched to the absolute limit recently with the 50th anniversary week, live episode etc, hence why to accomodate an hour long Christmas Day special they've had to drop a regular edition last night.

I wonder what the ratings will be like tonight.

ITV are showing a decent factual line up, showing kids in hospital at Christmas is typical festive TV and The Savoy is well made, but we all know what Tuesdays are like on ITV

BBC1 are showing an unadvertised one off that is apparantly rubbish, but with a good lead-in, so who knows?

ITV's 8pm hour with Children's Hospital at Christmas has 1m automatically docked off by being against Holby City, another hospital programme. Both in turn have viewers knocked off because of Top Gear, which has a good lead-in of ~3m from TOTP2.

So, I'm not sure. But I think we'll see BBC2 win the first 15 minutes from 9pm with ITV1 winning the remainder.

Not all the time. A load of good shows fall by the way side because they cant find an audience because the competition is too fierce.


I thought After Youve Gone was pretty good. It certainly did ok on Fridays at 8:30pm. I remember its first series grew from 4m to 6m, against Corrie too. Then it bombed on Sunday at 6pm because it was a stupid time. It was moved back to Fridays at 8:30pm but couldnt get over 4m again and the BBC decided to axe it despite initally recommisioing it.


Is it that bad after 30 minutes? At least its something original and not a New Tricks or George Gently repeat.

I think we'll see a hefty drop off for The Savoy. It was scheduled really poorly, 8 days after the first part.

Top Gear overrunning would have kept a lot of viewers with BBC Two which had a strong follow-on offering.

I still sense ~4m for The Savoy, which could win its slot barring the first 15 minutes. Apart from Top Gear, the opposition isn't that strong.

Besides of course its going to do worse than last Monday, last week it had ~12m lead-in, tonight it has ~3m probably.

Firstly the rating for the News made me go...! What a massive rating...obviously snow inflated. The ITV soaps performing solidly. Corrie really is on a roll at the moment in the after affects of the tram crash. Will be around 12.5m in the officials. And to be 0.9m ahead of EE on the first day of Xmas week is very unusual. EE generally adds all the extra viewers in this week normally judging on the previous several year's so it'll be interesting to see how the rest of the week pans out.

Also no ones seems to have noticed this...but that Emmerdale rating is their highest overnight rating since the murder of Mark Wylde on Thursday 14th January 2010, when that episode averaged 9.3m, and their third highest of the year! (second best was 9.0m on Thursday 7th January 2010).

The original plan was to show The Savoy yesterday with Come Rain Come Shine on Sunday at 9pm and Suchet tonight iirc, but BBC1 then moved The Apprentice to Sunday so ITV swapped things around as they didn't want their big drama to clash with The Apprentice, meaning that The Savoy ended up being clumsily shunted to tonight. They may have been better off showing it last Thursday with the Grimefighters thing tonight but that would have put it against The Royal Variety so they were a bit stuffed wherever they put it. I agree with D.M.N. in that it should still hold 4m or so tonight which would be fine.

Going back a bit but

I can see a need for normal news coverage. None-time specific current affairs is one thing but the news doesn't stop for Christmas. Imagine trying to fit todays news into 15 or 20 minutes? Vince Cable and the Snow will probably take up 15 minutes between them before anything else is covered

And its worth noting that for the past 4 years a major story has occured over the festive period; Saddam Hussain execution, Benazir Butto assasination, the Gaza 'war' and the Christmas Day underpants bomber. So it's pretty stupid to cut back news too much for Christmas

Guess you won't be watching the ITV News at 10 on the 29th/30th then - normal length bulletins The ITV Lunchtime News on the 29th is even longer than usual (40 minutes including regional news)



You can say that again. Must be one of the best ever, or at least in the past few years. Think it may have got to 1.3 million on a 'snow day' in the past. And almost beat Neighbours. Are there any ratings for the other channels at 5pm to compare please?

And Five will be pleased they didn't do what they did the week before Christmas last year - 3 15 minute bulletins in the afternoon. Doubt that would have rated as well. Maybe Richard Desmond should rethink his 'celebrity focus' plans if Five News can hold onto some momentum in the new year. Maybe just a boost from dark nights, but it been getting up to 0.9 million in recent weeks