Superb figures and shares for Coronation Street. Second episode may end up most watched programme of 2011 so far.

Pretty crap ratings all round apart from the soaps.
Primeval done much better for ITV than Outcasts for BBC1.

I did watch Outcasts last night and think it did get better but I don't think it will be back now.
But I wonder if there is another chance Survivors could be?

Shocker rating Could it go sub 2m tonight? Could BFGW climb higher in the ratings?

Must be a few ITVistas disappointed this morning that Outcasts didn't slump to sub-2.5m as they were hoping...

3.0m is still pitiful, of course. The odd misfire has to be expected now and then; what is concerning is that Beeb bosses didn't spot the pile of doo-doo they'd been delivered and schedule it accordingly - in August, say.

As the 9pm ratings show, viewers are unimpressed by the various offerings across the board - so the BBC would be upholding true PSB principles if they hoiked Outcasts out of its prime time berth now and put it into the margins, replacing it with something more viewer-friendly at 9pm.

Even ITV don't ditch shows which rate below 3m at 9pm any more, of which there are many more on ITV. There would be uproar if the BBC did so with Outcasts. It will have to play out where it is until the episodes run out. Or the tapes could mysteriously go missing...

What are you smoking?

Huge figures for Corrie! The shares for both episodes are really strong and I'm guessing last nights 2nd episode finished at 20:55, so the tapechecked rating will be even higher. Should be its most watched episode of the year when the officials come in, and deservedly so. And to complement that a huge share for Emmerdale, beating EE's share which is worth noting and very clever for ITV to have a big week of Emmerdale the same week as a big week for Corrie.

Rather disappointing though that TBL didn't increase-in the best slot of the week up against the weakest competition it's going to get it still manages ~4m. It must have peaked now then.

Pretty decent night for Ch5's relaunch. The news put in a decent figure, H&A is back over 1m, the start of OK:TV pulled in more than LFSF had been getting, although it will inevitably fall. Everything after 8pm 1m+ too, and a JLC show breaking the 1m mark!

So slightly under what LFSF got for its first episode then?

Key figures will be what it gets over the rest of the week.

In its first week Live From Studio Five got:

Mon: 475k
Tue: 437k
Wed: 370k
Thu: 304k
Fri: 243k

Any idea how the 2nd episode of Bedlam fared at 10pm on Sky Living (and +1)?

The BBC did pull Material Girl from the 8pm slot last year when it went sub 2m.

There are 5 episodes of Outcast left and that leaves the BBC very exposed. Much better to allow the show the dignity of a 10.35 airing than face weeks of criticism for bad ratings.

On the day the BBC are criticised for short commissions too.

I think you need to get the notion of out our head that there's some people here ("ITVistas" as you call them) willing for all BBC programmes to rate as low as possible. Of course there's exceptions like yourself who want certain channels to not rate well but you're an extreme case. People have preferences, of course, and prefer certain channels to others and dislike particular programmes, but in the real world I doubt there's anyone who says something like: "Oh dude, that new drama Outcasts sucks and... it's on the BBC... I hate the BBC, it's a big evil organisation... I want the ratings for Outcasts to go low, real low... muhahaha". Just think about how ridiculous that sounds.

If you're talking about "disappointment", I imagine the people who will be are the BBC executives who spent £8m on this series. I suppose it shows why broadcasters these days don't tend to commission long 6-8 part series as much as 3-parters because it's too risky. It certainly pays off if something like Downton Abbey comes along, but that's so rare, and the hit rate for new dramas is 1 in 3/4 so I can understand why the BBC and ITV tend to go for shorter runs of dramas. That's not saying I think they should cut down on the longer series but I think sometimes they get unfairly criticised for making shorter mini-series type dramas because as we've seen these last few years, nearly every new 6-8 part dramas flop.


Material Girl didn't go sub-2m until the 10:35pm episode. Its lowest overnight rating to that point was 2.4m, which I suspect Outcasts is on course to drop lower than. But I don't think they'll move Outcasts though because it's much more high-profile than MG which was unpromoted and burned off against Corrie anyway, and they've already scheduled it up to episode 5 on Mondays, so there's only 3 more episodes left. I think it'd be less embarrassing if they just leave it where it is rather than moving it to 10:35pm which the press would pick up on and there'd be certain quarters criticising the BBC for not letting the whole series play out as intended and accusing them of being too "ratings focussed". It'd open a can of worms. Better to leave it where it is, write the show off, learn from their mistakes and hopefully get it right next time they do a new sci-fi drama.

Yup. But that a year and a half ago now. As Broadcast Now, the industry leading magazine points out, these are the important things to note about last night's launch:


Those are the most important measures with which to compare and it beat them comfortably. It was also up by some margin on the 280k which Zoo Days held in the same slot last week (albeit with a particularly high AI).

Now- if over the next few nights it was to suffer a similar slide that occurred with Studio Five, I will concede it has not been a success. But as far as launch night goes, i.e. the only data we have so far, that was a decent performance in my view. Even if it was ever so slightly down on what Studio Five got for a more high-profile launch 18 months ago.

Thanks for the info re MG

Ben Richards (writer) just said this on Twitter. Niche can be interpreted in several ways in this context but I suspect he knows outcasts will be moved out of prime time.

@DanJWatts Thanks. Couple of my favourite eps still to come but viewing figs low again so it's gonna have to be niche viewing!!!

But my point was that a show like this is very difficult to judge from its first airing. LFSF, which by all accounts was very similar, collapsed after a moderately successful launch. From what I've heard about OKTV, we could see a similar pattern.

HUGE figures for both Corrie's and well deserved. Two excellent episodes last year. Tape-checked that second episode is close to 12m so it should become the most watched episode of the year so far when the officials come in. A very strong rating for Emmerdale too with a massive 37% share. The show has been performing very well throughout 2011 so far.

More soap ratings from DS:

BBC1
13:45- Doctors: 1.87m (23.8%)

ITV1 (inc. HD)
19:30- Coronation Street: 10.96m (45.5%) , +1: 123k (0.5%)
20:30- Coronation Street: 11.91m (45.6%) ,+1: 139k (0.6%)
* tape-checked

Channel 5
13:45- Neighbours: 865k (10.9%)
14:15- Home & Away: 285k (3.9%)
17:30- Neighbours: 1.43m (8.7%)
18:00- Home & Away: 1.04m (5.3%)

E4
19:00- Hollyoaks: 431k (1.9%) , +1: 51k (0.2%)

Fiver
18:30- Home & Away: 585k (2.8%)
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Also, DS says the tape-checked rating for the 8:30pm episode of Corrie was 11.91m (45.6%). Timeshift will almost certainly send it to the mid to high 12's level in the official ratings and it's an early contender for most watched scripted programme this year. I imagine if EastEnders wants to beat that, they'll have to pull a big rating out of the hat on Christmas Day (bigger than the last 3 years).

No Ian Wright shouting over everybody last night should help retention prospects I would think.

You might be right about it being difficult to judge, I'm not declaring it a hit yet either. I'm merely commenting that based on YoY and slot average figures, that was a decent start for OK! TV. Can you disagree with that, even if you do expect it to go belly up from here?

The BBC should do what US drama shows do. A pilot episode which can pick up things which arn't working, or the ability to can the series early if it's a stinker.

If it's trying to emulate BSG, then BSG actually started with a 3 hr mini-series before being launched with a full series.

Something for the controllers to bear in mind.

Great for Corrie, it was excellent last night. EastEnders may come close on the episode when this baby swap is actually revealed but despite the huge complaints and press attention the storyline didn't translate into this kind of rating Corrie got. The reveal might well get them there.

I'm waiting for Robbie to post "ITV must be disappointed.... blah blah blah .........."

Very poor for Outcasts last night. I think it will probably be borderline whether they remove it from 9pm or not. I have been watching it and am almost ready to call it day, it just doesn't seem as interesting as American sci-fi to me. At least the BBC have got Torchwood to show they can do a well made adult sci-fi show, although I suppose that is half American now.


That seems quite close for the early evening news bulletins. I don't usually notice though so maybe it's normal.


Another 2011 series high for One Born Every Minute.

I don't disagree, but at the same time I don't think it's the best basis on which to judge the performance of the show, bearing in mind the degree to which LFSF collapsed in 2009.

If OKTV had done anything other than significantly increase the slot average on its first day, it would have been a disaster IMO.

See, I don't think so. People can't have it both ways. The criticism has been that it's just basically a rebranded version of Studio Five. Having caught bits of it last night, I would agree. So really it wouldn't have been a surprise to me at all if the rating had been similar to how Studio Five has been doing recently, rather than nearly match Studio Five's highest ever rating.

It looks to me like viewers gave it another chance based on the OK! brand. The new presenter and sprucing up of the studio will have helped as well. Whether or not viewers deemed it an improvement enough on Studio Five to stick with it, we shall see as the series progresses.

But after the potentially disastrous news on Friday, I'm willing to bet there are some pretty relieved people at both Channel 5 and Sky News this morning having seen these early figures.

shame about Outcasts, but I cant say im too surprised, its just dull.

on to OK! TV, a decent start, but lets see where it is next Monday, I cant see it staying at those ratings for very long.

But if you are rebranding, repackaging, and reworking an unsuccessful format - which is what they are doing, essentially - it has to improve ratings significantly, else it was a complete waste of resource.

And the closest historical predictor we have in LFSF, which launched with similar ratings and declined rapidly. There's no reason to think that OKTV won't follow exactly the same pattern, and if it does then this experiment will largely have been a failure.

I doubt anyone at Channel 5 is genuinely thrilled with last night's ratings - relieved that there was some improvement, maybe...