Bruce was paid £15,000 a show for Bruce Forsyth's Big Night when Michael Grade poached him from the BBC for LWT in 1978.The BBC hastily drafted in Larry Grayson and his version of Gen Game began two weeks before the new Forsyth show. Viewers found the Forsyth show too long (two hours) and the format confused because it was a combination of quiz,sitcom,audience members telling jokes,even a fancy dress competition.It was consistently beaten by the Gen Game. It had begun in October and was axed in December 1978 although The Pyramid Game was spun off as a separate series with Steve Jones.

Turned Out Nice Again,the story of British Light entertainment, Louis Barfe,Atlantic Books 2008

but thats not what you asked! you are moving your own goalposts now........

Robbie, the Generation Game relaunched in September 1990 and it was put on Friday nights at 8pm with Casualty at 9.30pm. Both shows were a huge huge ratings success, especially as programmes in general were attracting less viewers due to the arrival of multi channel Britain.

It was Christmas Day 1990 that the Gen Game received 18 million viewers as it featured in a terrifically strong line up:

The World TV premiere of E.T,
Only Fools and Horses and then The Generation Game.

Back in those days the BBC produced very strong line ups even though people say they have never been about chasing ratings! They were and still are!

It was Autumn 1991 that the Generation Game moved back to the Saturday night slot after Challenge Anneka was placed in its new regular Friday night 8pm slot! (Well for 2 years anyway!)

In 1991 the Saturday night schedule consisted of Every Second Counts, Noels House Party, The Generation Game, The House of Elliott, Birds of a Feather and Casualty!

With the EPG swap, Sky News HD is on the default 501 channel in 3.5m homes. No need to go searching for it any more. As Sky Sports News proved, the vast majority of viewers watched it on Sky and not on Freeview. I expect similar for Sky News.

E4 HD are reporting separately from Feb 28. Whether we get to see the figures, who knows?

Not entirely sure about that statement myself. Whilst I will admit the drop off hasn't been as big as I or others had expected, Sky Sports News has still lost 22% of its viewers, or just over 1 in 5 if you prefer, since the Freeview feed was switched off. (source: reach figures Feb 2011/Feb 2010, BARB.co.uk)

I would also argue that Sky have taken steps to try and artificially inflate its figures. For example, no longer simulcasting the weekend Soccer Specials (which are the big audience draw on SSN) on Sky Sports 1 & 2, bringing in viewers that otherwise might not have watched.

I would assume Sky News would be more greatly affected if it was removed from Freeview as the news channel doesn't have Sky's premium sports subscriber base to support it. But for a moment let's go along with your theory and assume Sky News has a similar percentage of viewers coming from DTT.

An average Sky News bulletin has a total audience of around 80,000 viewers. If 22% are watching on Freeview, that leaves you with about 62,000. Let's assume only 18,000 of those are cable viewers as Sky have roughly two and a half times the number of subscribers. That leaves you with 44,000. Only about a third of Sky's customers have HD so if we strip out the two thirds that can't that leaves us with around 15,000, but this includes viewers that are watching in SD when they could be in HD. Even with the changes made there are probably still a couple of thousand or so that are doing this. And to be honest, I think the number watching on Freeview is higher, so the actual figure is probably closer to 10k.

Basically we are left with a tiny number. If you strip out those that would be watching anyway regardless of the HD channel's existance, then you are left with a number not much above 0. And I'm not convinced anyone would feel compelled to subscribe to Sky TV just to watch Sky News in HD, nobody is that sad. mlt11 will argue that incremental improvements are driving subscribers, but I don't honestly think Sky News HD would factor into anyone's decision to make that leap.

As I said, Sky News HD was a huge waste of money that cost a load more jobs in a recession. There are no positives that can be drawn from it unless you genuinely feel your viewing experience is enhanced being able to watch Burley pontificating and pouting to the camera in high-def. If you do, I worry about you I really do!

Does anyone know the ITV1 soap ratings without +1 please? It's becoming abit annoying now as it's going to be hard to compare to EE and last year etc if the +1 figures are automatically bundled in now.

DS soaps roundups mentions them.

Strong return for Law and Order. ITV will be relieved that a return to Mondays helped it's audience return to series 1/2 levels. WTD will obviously dent it next week but hopefully last night's rating will put it in good stead to hold up at a decent level. Pretty uneventful elsewhere, although One Born Every Minute deserves a mention for being so consistently strong. Motorway Cops was very low. I know it was a repeat but that doesn't normally make too much of a difference. At that level they may as well have left Outcasts in the slot.

Does anyone have some sort of breakdown for Law and Order? I'm interested to see how it held up over the hour in the Monday slot? Also, does anyone have some kind of breakdown for ITV on Saturday night, for Push The Button in particular as I'm curious to see if it's increasing when Let's Dance ends? Thanks a lot in advance.

I'm out in the afternoons, so I rarely see Kay Burley, the rest of the channel is enhanced no end, as are the majority of programmes broadcast in HD on all channels.

Ah, forgot that the DS rating for the second Corrie is tape-checked and you probably want a full slot average. The estimated full slot rating for the 8.30pm Corrie is: 9.45m. But that is an estimation and not 100% accurate - it could've been something like 9.38m or 9.47m - the 9.45m figure is estimated based on trying to convert the inc.+1 ratings to exc. +1 by doing the following:

- in those long roundups, the shares are always excluding +1. So the 8.30pm Corrie had a 37.4% share on ITV1 (exc. +1) as mentioned in that list.
- find out the total no. of viewers watching between 8.30-9.00pm. To do that, you need to look at the rating of another programme which aired in the same slot. So that would be Panorama which had 2.98m (11.8%) - find out the total no. of viewers by using these two figures and doing the following: (2.98 divided by 11.8) x 100 = 25.2542, which is the total no. of viewers watching TV between 8.30-9pm.
- Now you have to use that Corrie share - 37.4%. Do the following: [25.2542 (total no of viewers) divided by 100] multiplied by 37.4% (share of programme you want rating for) = 9.45 = no. of people who watched Corrie between 8.30-9pm (9.45 million).

But the above method isn't 100% accurate because the total no. of viewers is an estimation and not totally correct. Therefore as the total no. of viewers is not 100% correct, the no. of viewers you calculate may not be 100% correct. Before when I was "converting" the numbers, sometimes the excluding +1 numbers I'd calculated would not be correct and different to the actual ones reported. That's why I've stopped trying to convert them because there's no point doing them imo if some of them are going to be incorrect. But as a last resort if no other website has reported the excluding +1 numbers (like in this Corrie case), I guess doing it this way gives you some kind of idea what its figure might've roughly been.

Saturday 19th March is a rugby fest then on BBC One.

14:00 Six Nations Rugby : Scotland v Italy
16:30 Six Nations Ruby : Ireland v England
19:15 BBC News; Regional News; Weather
19:30 Six Nations Rugby : France v Wales
22:00 National Lottery Draws
22:10 BBC News
22:30 Match of the Day
23:50 The Football League Show

BBC Sport Channel anyone ?

Do non-England matches rate particularly well in primetime ?

Good return for Law and Order - and a terrible night for BBC One. They inevitably have to use filler sometimes, but their New Tricks / Motorway Cops bankers don't seem to work so well anymore. It's difficult to see what else they could use to better effect, though.

L&O debuting up seems to be in line with the trend for drama so far in 2011. It's been a good few months for both new and returning shows. ITV have had Marchlands and Kidnap & Ransom doing the business, with Wild at Heart very strong. BBC One have seen Hustle, Silent Witness and Lark Rise all up year-on-year, South Riding is a hit, and Silk and Zen have done respectable numbers too.

Outcasts and Taggart are naturally the exceptions that prove the rule.

DigiGuide update for week commencing Sunday 19th March:

Saturday 19th
Christopher And His Kind (with Matt Smith) on BBC2, 9:30- 11pm
Premiere of The Happening on Channel 4, 9 - 10:50

Sunday 20th
Duran Duran: One Night Only on ITV1, 8:30 - 9:30

Tuesday 22nd
Supersize vs Superskinny Kids returns on Channel 4 for the rest of the week, 8 - 9
Katie: My Beautiful Friends starts straight after, 9-10
White Van Man (new sitcom) starts on BBC3, 10:30 - 11

Wednesday 23rd
The Crimson Petal & The White begins on BBC2, 9 - 10

Thursday 24th
My Big Fat Fake Wedding on BBC1, 9-10pm; it's a Panorama special
Women In Love starts on BBC4, 9-10:30pm
Russell Howard's Good News returns on BBC3, 10:30-11pm

Friday 25th
New Tricks repeats continue on BBC1, 9-10pm
Frank Skinner's Opinionated is back on BBC2, 10-10:30pm

Thanks to Elgin on GB for the above info

Just noticed a show on BBC 2, called Amercian Idol, I was confused for a moment, but then realised it wasnt what I thought it was.

Maybe BBC Two is trying to confuse people into watching.

They did something similar last year iirc. France vs Wales should do OK, about 5m or so? What have ITV gone with in primetime against the rugby?

Nice list but Elgin on GB missed off a big movie premiere:


Copyright (c) GipsyMedia Limited.

Looks like

18:20 New You've Been Framed !
18:50 Harry Hills TV Burp
19:20 Ant & Dec's Push the Button
20:35 Take Me Out
22:05 Film : Casino Royale

Seems long though for Take Me Out (last in the series ?)

So HH due to start after the England match during post match analysis, A&D to start before the France v Wales tie.

I'm going to correct you there slightly - Casualty didn't move back to Saturdays until 1992, when it was moved into a post-watershed slot, with the Gen Game directly before it. The only time that Casualty was shown on Saturdays in 1991 was when series 5 (the 1990 season) was rerun in Spring/Summer.

I dont know if this has been posted yet, but T.E.N. has reached a new low

http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2011/03/...ning-news.html

This looks to be down to how the TEN network is made up, but its hardly a good sign for TEN, how long till it opts out of more stuff like STV do ITV.

Thanks. Looks like pretty good scheduling in fairness, with Burp airing against 25 minutes of post-match analysis and Button getting a head start on the rugby and starting against the news. TMO is the last in the series so it'll be longer than usual as they need to show the dates from earlier in the same show as well as from the previous week. Doesn't need to be 90 mins though, but I also think that 75 mins is too long for normal editions.

Yeah, The House of Eliott was BBC1's Saturday drama in autumn 1991. And Challenge Anneka was on Saturday nights until Noel's House Party began in November.

The Friday 8pm hour in autumn 1991 was taken up with The Russ Abbott Show, On the Up and...

Last of the Summer Wine!

I think it was England v France primetime on Saturday this time last year - which obviously did well. France v Wales was played in Friday primetime in 2009, pulling a good 4.4m on BBC Two. That was against the fierce competition of Moving Wallpaper / Al Murray on ITV and QI / Not Going Out on BBC One though.

Still, given that its the last day of the championship an on BBC One this time round, I imagine it should break 5m. Maybe more if the championship rests on the result (ie. if England lose to Scotland or Ireland in the next two games).

I'm sure we can expect a load more threads like this that weekend:

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s....php?t=1232486

I'm not too worried about BGT without Cowell - indeed my only worry is him returning for the live shows undermines the new panel from the offset.

The X Factor is trickier and whether Cowell stays or goes it'll be seen that he's neglecting the UK show all for the sake of America. If Cowell does go they need an unknown replacement with his kind of experience IMO - not just a name. If he stays perhaps he could just appear on the Saturday shows as an impartial judges, with the other three mentoring the acts between them and voting without Cowell on the Sunday.


That's true, but I'm struggling to think of another. Les Dennis and Family Fortunes perhaps.


Of course the BBC should go ahead and launch a 24 hour sports channel as one day a year they have three games of rugby to show.

The usual folk will moan with absolutely no thought of the people such as myself for whom the Six Nations is why the licence fee is worth paying - and far more worthy of airtime one night a year than a second rate Lottery show and another recycled storyline in Casualty.

I just switch over when the Six Nations is on, I have no interest in it, but wouldn't get into some debate about what a waste of licence payers money it is, as someone could say the same about football, Doctor Who, etc. My escape route will be Channel 5.