If BBC4 didn't exist, it would have been on BBC2 and possibly got similar figures to Eric & Ernie.

It's a shame these bio dramas are put on a channel that only 20% of the population watch, yet 100% pay for.

BBC4 reaches a larger % then 20% come 2012 it will be one of the basic channels

Now that other sources have updated, here's a roundup for Wednesday's overnights:

Wednesday 20th January Overnights
BBC One
13:45- Doctors: 1.68m (23.5%)
19:00- The One Show: 4.4m (20.4%)
19:30- Rip Off Britain: 5.03m (23.7%)
20:00- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: 4.74m (19.9%)
22:45- Film 2011 with Claudia Winkleman: 1.31m (10.4%)

BBC Two
19:00- Simon King's Shetland Diaries: 1.64m (7.7%)
20:00- Michel Roux's Service: 1.87m (8.1%)
21:00- Edwardian Farm: 1.81m (7.4%)
22:00- Never Mind The Buzzcocks: 1.2m (5.9%)

ITV1
19:00- Emmerdale: 7.79m (36.1%)
19:30- Live FA Cup Football: 5.2m (22.5%)
* 19:30-22:10: 5.14m (22.22%)
* peak: 6.26m (26.5%) at 20:40

Channel 4
18:00- The Simpsons: 2.09m (inc. +1)
18:30- Hollyoaks: 1.06m (5%)
20:00- Will My Crash Diet Kill Me?: 1.62m (7%) , +1: 150k (0.6%)
21:00- Mary Portas: Secret Shopper: 2.72m (11.1%) , +1: 349k (1.9%)
22:00- The Joy of Teen Sex: 1.79m (9.8%) , +1: 314k (3.3%)

Channel 5
13:45- Neighbours: 640k (8.9%)
17:30- Neighbours: 1.24m (7.5%)
18:00- Home & Away: 809k (4.2%)
19:00- Monkey Diaries: 658k (3.1%)
20:00- Cowboy Builders: 1.59m (6.9%)
21:00- NCIS: 1.85m (7.5%)
22:00- Law & Order: Criminal Intent: 988k (5.3%)

BBC Three
21:00- Is Oral Sex Safe?: 410,200 (1.7%)
22:00- Pulp Fiction: 691,000 (5.5%)

BBC4
21:00- Hattie: 1.73m (7.4%) inc. HD
* peak: 1.94m (9%) at 22:00
* most watched BBC4 programme ever
22:25- This is Your Life: 1.15m (6.6%)

E4
19:00- Hollyoaks: 414k (1.9%)
21:00- She’s All That: 229,300 (1.1%) , +1: 137k

Fiver
18:30- Home and Away: 465k (2.2%)

ITV2
21:00- I Am Legend: 524,400 (2.4%)

Primetime Shares
ITV1: 21.6%
BBC One: 20.3%
Channel 4: 7.9% (+1: 0.9%)
BBC Two: 7.2%
Channel 5: 5.5%

Sources: Broadcast, DS TV, DS Soaps

Ratings include HD where necessary

Ah, so Secret shopper only had 2.7m then, the 3.1m was including +1.

Oops, I meant 19th January...


Also this should be 5.3m for the actual scheduled slot. Tape-checked average, however, was 5.14m.

Channel 4 Sales is reporting 3.35m for The Year Britain Froze on Tuesday, beating Shameless.

Here's Wednesday's demographic information:http://i55.tinypic.com/ac6261.jpg

- Football was the most popular programme with 16-34s on Wednesday
- Mary Portas: Secret Shopper had a high ABC1 skew
- Unsurprisingly, The Joy of Teen Sex had a high 16-34 skew compared to the other shows. Interesting, however, that its second most popular age range was people aged 65+!
- In terms of A18-49s, Indiana Jones had slightly more viewers than the football, although with HD included it was probably a tie.
- Edward Farm has a really old audience but I suppose that shouldn't come as a surprise as BBC2 caters for older viewers. So in that respect, it's doing its job well.

As for Tuesday, I don't have that data unfortunately. But C4Sales does say that Big Fat Gypsy Weddings had 1.86m 16-34s watching it, which must've been the second highest of the day (only behind EastEnders) and easily the most popular in its slot among the demo (by about 3:1).


Looks like it's a typo from them. The Year Britain Froze had 2.47m (including C4+1) according to DS.

ITV are extending Countrywise to an hour:

It looks like it's destined for Tuesdays at 8pm. Countrywise's new episodes were getting almost 4m in its Monday 8pm slot last year so I suppose ITV sees this as an opportunity to sort of fix the Tuesday 8pm problem if it can get similar figures.

Even if it does get a budget boost, ITV may well still save money if the cost of 60 mins Countryfile is less than the cost of 30 mins Countryfile + 30 mins of other programming.

Indiana Jones is remarkable, to be honest. A set of 25-30 year old movies that have held down respectable levels on Wednesday nights since the beginning of the year. And gave an FA Cup replay a run for its money among young viewers!


Seems like a pretty good bet to me. A cheap way of hopefully bringing 3.5m+ into that most awkward of slots.

Thursday's overnight ratings have now been released by BARB. Hopefully we'll get them soon...

Really interested in seeing how 10 O'Clock Live did on C4.

some quick overnights

Emmers 7.34m
EE - 9.62m
Emmers - 7.75m
Corrie - 8.55m
HO - 1.15m
Neighbours - 1.19m
HAA - 876k


K&R - 4.5m
CFWM - 5.78m
NGO - 4.04m

1.37m

Kidnap and Ransom down 0.9m (-17%) from last week, which is slightly more than what I was expecting (was thinking it would drop about 10%). They better hope the next episode doesn't fall like that once again because if that happens, it's unlikely to return for another series. It might have a chance for renewal if it can stay at ~4.5m because I imagine timeshift will be quite significant (like most dramas these days).

Come Fly with Me and Not Going Out down about 0.2m week-on-week, which is fine.


After all the promotion, I was expecting more than that tbh!

HD will boost that figure somewhat

Mike - do you know what Human Planet (BBC1), Men of Rock (BBC2), Rome Wasn't Built in a Day (C4) and Jack The Ripper (C5) got ?


Yeah true. With HD, it probably had 4.7m.

from the top

HP - 4.82m
MoR - 1.21m
Rome - 1.64m
JtR - 1.3m

Shame for Kidnap and Ransom to fall below 5m - might have hoped for better retention than that.

Steady as she goes for Come Fly With Me and Not Going Out. Thats been a nice, solid comedy block for BBC One - and they haven't tended to have many of those in recent years. Not surprised to see Human Planet fall somewhat - it seems to be the trend for these big natural history series - but its still at decent levels.

Average-to-poor for 10 O'Clock Live, but C4 will stick with it through its long run. These sorts of shows take a good while to get into their stride, I feel.

Thanks . Hmmm... a big-ish drop for Human Planet but in line with the drops other series like this have experienced in the past. The Jack The Ripper doc on C5 did well and the Rome show on C4 did about as much as I expected. But it seems like the terrestrials were dented last night.

Forgot to ask previously - do you know what American Idol got on ITV2? IIRC, last year's opener had over 1m, so this might've dented some of the terrestrials yesterday.

AI:NY - 484k (looks like I wasn't the only one who thought it was weird without Simon)

it's competition for the second hour
Big Bang - 636k
How I Met - 362k

I think MPD will be okay but in light of the ratings mary/gypsy got the C4 I think the days of live shows will end soon.

thats a pretty dire figure when you think the promo's its been getting.

Excellent for Mary Portas on Wednesday-Ch4 on a role. A shame 10 O'Clock Live couldn't do really well, but I guess inc +1 it will be around 1.5m which isn't a disaster for the 10pm slot. Rome Wasn't Built.. performing OK. I thought that could be a big flop.

CFWM seems to be stabilising now and I do wonder how it would do without the random Saturday repeats. Quite a big drop for K&R though, but I guess it could be worse.

Ch5 having a mixed week. Looks like it's going to be a tough few weeks for CSI, especially up against two UK dramas and Ch4's biggest hit factual in years. NCIS slightly up which is good to see, but it's still not as good as it should be getting. Jack The Ripper seemed to do well in an unusual slot for that type of show.

Yikes - the American Idol opener did pretty badly. Last year's first episode had 1.24m, so it had less than half of that yesterday! Not good, especially because ratings for Idol usually drop by almost 50% from launch to the other stages of the competition.

This is supposed to be one of ITV2's "big hitters" but with this down, no Katie Price and Peter Andre's declining ratings, ITV2 may well suffer a year-on-year decline this year unless there's some new successes which come through. In saying that, they're likely to show X Factor USA later this year or next year which I'm sure will do very well.

Mary was wasted on BBC2 I know she can be a bit OTT at times but normally does a pretty decent show I think her talents were wasted on BBC2,C4 seems like a natural home for her.

Not much to say on Wednesday's and Thursday's ratings really. Wednesday's I think are as expected, Thursday's similar although I hoped Kidnap and Ransom stayed above 5m.