No Match of the Day in Scotland tonight by the way, instead Scottish Cup highlights on Sportscene. May affect tomorrow's ratings.

Let's not get carried away. There has to be a natural limit for late night Saturday football highlights; it just means the pool of viewers who casually tune in from time to time may make more of an effort tonight.

If it gets a 5m overnight, that will be fantastic; 4.5m would be perfectly acceptable given the lack of decent lead-in and it not likely to be a "big TV watching night".


There may have been an argument for extending it by 10 minutes. It was very condensed tonight, certainly for some matches.


Shouldn't affect the overnights I wouldn't have thought, but it will mean the official ratings will definitely be sub 5m even if the overnight comes in at around that mark.

Yesterday's football ratings:

MOTD: 5.24m (31.8%)

Football First
20:25 - 0.25m (1.1%)
22:15 - 0.06m (0.4%)

Must be MOTD's highest rating in years.

That will be the Emmy award winning Waking The Dead.


I'm with you Robbie Waking The Dead is excellent and the opening two parter for this series is apparently superb. They shouldn't be axing their hits.

Brilliant rating for MOTD.

Brilliant for MOTD. Next week is The Secret Fortune on BBC1, a new gameshow. Million Pound Drop always starts straight after In it to Win it - a good gameshow lead-in.

An excellent figure but the MOTD audience has been quietly growing all season.I think it actually helps when people know the results and the BBC News immediately before MOTD always obliges us, not least the silly advice to ''look away now'' while they read the results. Look away now ? Surely it should be Turn off the sound as well.So much also for those national newspaper scribes who want rid of Hansen and Shearer.

Some overnights from last night:

BBC One (inc HD)
19:00- Total Wipeout: 5.41m (23.4%)
20:00- The National Lottery: In It To Win It: 6.47m (27.2%)
20:50- Casualty: 5.81m (24.0%)
22:30- Match of the Day: 5.24m (31.8%)

ITV1 (inc HD)
19:00- Harry Hill's TV Burp: 5.50m (23.8%)
19:30- Primeval: 3.60m (15.4%)
20:30- Take Me Out: 3.96m (16.4%)

Sky Sports 2
20:25- Football First: 0.25m (1.1%)
22:15- Football First: 0.06m (0.4%)

Thanks to MattJ for the ratings

Poor for Harry Hill. Brill for MOTD.

Primeval surely won't be in primetime for the next series; even a 5.5m lead-in from TV Burp couldn't stop 2m leaving ITV at 19:30...

Who is hosting that gameshow on BBC1 next week.

I'd say Harry Hill had a decent figure considering the rugby on BBC1 helped give Wipeout a leg up. Casualty couldn't get over 6m though. Very disappointing.

Nick Knowles

Strong start for TV Burp- ITV needed that after their recent Saturday performances, but it still couldn't boost the rest of the line up probably meaning it's Primeval that's ruining their schedule. I thought TV Burp could have been sub 5m against TW, in a schedule of poor rating programmes & considering repeats have been on air for the past few weeks.

BBC1 had a good night as usual. IITWI benefiting from going up against the first half of Primeval. Casualty did well I thought considering it seemed to be just based on the life of one main character and different from normal episodes. And of course excellent for MOTD. I was expecting about that after seeing yesterdays results.

Does this mean that they have stopped doing the other Lottery gameshow with Nick Knowles?

I assume the 60,000 for the 10.15pm show is just for the match on the main channel and not the numerous red button feeds?

It means Nick Knowles has signed a ''golden handcuffs'' deal with the BBC and now they have to find something for him to do in addition to his numerous DIY shows all of which seemed to be exactly the same

There's going to be a few changes to the Lotto during the week...
Dream Number is being scrapped after Wednesday (because they've raised their 2012 Olympics target).
A new game called 'Lotto +5' launches on Thursday, allowing people to play 5 times during weekdays.
National Lottery: Secret Fortune launches on Saturday night with Nick Knowles, where 2 friends try to win between 100 and 100,000 pounds.

They were scared someone else was going to poach Nick Knowles?!

Poor start for TV Burp.

Given BBC1 only had the rugby post-match as lead-in, you'd have expected TV Burp to comfortably pass the 6m mark and outrate Total Wipeout by a stronger margin than 0.09m.

Perhaps the ennui brought on by the last clapped-out series has had an effect? That said, I thought it was something of a return to form last night for Harry. Some laugh out loud moments that had been sadly lacking for some time, and less studio silliness.

Good for MOTD, as expected.

Of all the people that the BBC sign to golden handcuffs it's Nick Knowles!?! He's all right but he isn't one of the great light entertainment presenters.

After seemingly endless repeats, I had no idea that Harry Hill wasn't a re-run last night until I just read it here.

Would be interesting to see a breakdown for MOTD. The audience always drops off by the end, so if it averaged 5.24m over 80 mins from 10.30pm, I imagine it was >6m early on.

Could it have even got yesterday's biggest viewing peak? Unlikely with Lotto averaging 6.5m, but could be close.

Some more ratings, thanks to MattJ:

BBC1
16:35 - Six Nations Rugby Union- France vs Scotland: 3.84m (19.3%)
22:30 - Sportscene: 0.24m (18.1%)
* BBC1 Scotland only
* means MOTD audiences in rest of the nations was 5.00m

ITV1 +1
20:00 - Harry Hill's TV Burp: 0.22m
20:30 - Primeval: 0.11m
21:30 - Take Me Out: 0.16m

Slightly lower than expected for the Six Nations game.

I don't think that's too bad for a non-England encounter, starting at 4.35pm. Presumably the match itself will have been a decent 4-4.5m.

Puts in context what I said earlier about Total Wipeout doing very well, and TV Burp not (despite narrowly winning).

Low for the rugby, all that talk yesterday about the whole competition being ratings gold seems a bit redundant now.