Stupid, stupid BSI. You put Let's Dance out 20 minutes earlier than everyone expected it, for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and you lost a million viewers as a result.

Cretinous bloody cretins.

Great for Taken. I imagine Ch4 may well have been ahead of ITV1's millionteenth showing of The World is Not Enough?

Good figures for LDFCR, I think it was down in week 3 last year as well if I remember correctly.

ITV up a bit, but I doubt they'll be pleased Harry Hill's TV Burp's figures and in particular Push the Button's figures.

Great for Taken.

That was the official line. A few days work in April was hardly going to interfere with the World Cup in June/July!

And Dan Walker managed to do extensive work on the World Cup and return to do The Open.

I think ITV would be better off with Harry Hill just doing one series a year, in the autumn.

Isn't it time maybe ITV ditched TV Burp, as the ratings are well down and it's not a patch on what it used to be.

Re the Masters Golf - come on, do people really expect that either the BBC want to give up hours of primetime Saturday and Sunday BBC1's schedule for minority viewing like golf, or that the rights holders in the US really gave a stuff about BBC1's greater reach than BBC2 in terms of the UK audience?

It will be on BBC2.

Perhaps they were "resting" him for our benefit rather than his. I suspect too it was as much to do with Hazel Irvine as it was with Gary who has now stepped away from athletics and is also losing a snooker tournament this year I believe.

As for Harry Hill - doubt the 6.40pm start did him any favours either compared to the 7.30pm slot he had in the past.

I'd expect it to be on BBC Two on Saturday. Might move to BBC One at 10.25pm on Sunday, for the last few holes.

It's rebounded from the nadir of last autumn's series. Not back to its best, but improved. I think not having to act as a fluffer for Cowell's circus helps.

Shame it is not getting the ratings, but I guess it does show how many of its autumn viewers are simply waiting for TXF to come on and non-viewers of SCD.

They've only done the channel swap before on Thursdays and Fridays to give way to Newsnight.

I suppose this is his raison d etre, to act as an alternative to SCD, same as Casualty is aimed at viewers who don't like TXF.

I think this series is vastly improved - certainly the best for me for a good few series.

Ratings aren't great but that slot won't have helped - I thought it was on too early last night.

Casualty was also on 20 minutes earlier than last week and its ratings went up.

If they'd put Let's Dance on at 7pm they'd have had to have put Outtake TV or Hole In The Wall on at 5.30 so good scheduling. ()

The Sunday rerun invariably makes the top 30. Then there's HD too (although it's not made in HD).

w/e Feb 6 it made ITV1 HD's top ten with 423,000.

I know, but if any weekend coverage ends up on BBC One, I'd expect it to be on the Sunday night, at 10.25pm, or maybe even as rzt suggested, 9pm, with Waking the Dead playing on Mon/Tue.

As a observer of ratings over the years, casualty always seemed to rate better at 8pm rather than 9
9pm every other night is the main event, why not on a Saturday aswell

Fantastic rating for Taken. It was helped no doubt by the great timing to coincide the release of Neeson's latest action offering Unknown. Looks like Let's Dance was dented a little by a combination of the slightly earlier start, weaker lead in and lack of Katie price, but 6.4m is still a very commendable rating for it. ITV aren't having a great time of it on Saturdays at the moment. I assume that these figures exclude HD and +1 but even so TV Burp did very poorly. Push The Button will be at 4.5m or so with HD and +1, but whilst it is up on last week, it is still too low for Ant and Dec and as I've said before, it'd probably be sub-3m without them. Take Me Out is a bit better for them as with HD and +1 it'll be at about 4.9m, which is solid for it and it should definitely return. I wonder if it hit 5m with +1?

ITV need to take a proper looks at TV Burp. ~4.3m is simply unacceptable for it, and it's been sub-5m for 3 weeks in a row now. The first two weeks of this series did well, with the second episode just 3 weeks ago getting an overnight of 6m so this collapse is a bit bizarre. 2 weeks ago it had 4.7m after the football but that was fairly normal but it's done very badly for the last 2 episodes. I'm not sure why as last year he generally got about 5m against Let's Dance, and whilst the slot was too early last night he got 4.3m last week at 7pm. Let's Dance got a low-ish rating for its standards last night so that doesn't really explain it. Previous Winter/Spring runs have averaged:

2007: 4.9m
2008: 5.8m
2009: 5.4m
2010: 5.6m

So far this series is averaging 5.0m but that's pulled up by the first 2 episodes. Next week's football match should peak at ~9m so surely that should give it some sort of boost as even the analysis should hold 6-7m. Are the Sunday repeats doing well? That may go some way to explaining it but it really hasn't done too well for the last few weeks and it's an issue that needs to be addressed by ITV. Really they should have gone with Push The Button at 6:40pm and TV Burp at 8pm last night as Button would probably have got about the same rating and TV Burp would have been boosted by starting as Let's Dance ended. Hopefully next week should see things improve a bit.

I don't think cutting the number of new episodes is necessary, but I'd certainly get rid of the Best Of editions in December and January, and maybe push the Spring run back a few weeks so there'd be a good couple of months between series. The Best Of shows could run in July and August instead, where there would still be gaps between them and the new editions.

I don't see the point of the Best Ofs.

Save the Best Ofs for when Harry calls it a day, at some point in the future.

Lineker hasn't done the golf for ages, I assume he decided he was doing enough with the football and, as has been suggested, he was never that great at it. And if he's too busy to do the Open it makes sense to have one person doing all the golf. That said, in 2006, Lineker did the World Cup, did Sport Relief the week after, then the Open the following week, then had two weeks off before the football season started, so he was actually very busy.


I can't believe this discussion has carried on so long, of course it's not going to be on BBC1. Five hours non-stop golf on a Sunday night? Where's the news going, for heaven's sake! They wouldn't even do that with football!

They did move the Masters to BBC1 after ten o'clock on the Sunday in 2002, because 24 was running at the time and they wanted to avoid the kind of people who constantly moan at the Beeb moaning at the Beeb for taking it off.


Yes, it's hardly as if Let's Dance was on at 4pm or something, everyone knows BBC1 and ITV's Saturday schedules shuffle around all over the place. If anyone's turning on at 7pm it's their own fault. And as you say, they either move everything forwards to allow for an extra show at 9.40 or move everything back and put some rubbish on at 5.30 instead. And given the amount of recaps, nobody's going to turn on at seven, see it's started, and immediately switch off, it's the kind of show you only need to see bits of.

Isn't 3 hours of DOI a bit much and shows a lack of imagination at ITV1? However, they do have this overkill mode with their biggest shows.

That's a good point, actually. They couldn't even do 9pm on the Sunday because of the 10pm news. I didn't think of that.

Harry Hill was getting 11m for both the Saturday and Sunday viewings not so long ago and now the combined audience is just over 8m.

I think they do them because they can't just repeat episodes from years ago due to rights issues so if they want repeats then they need to do them as a Best Of show. I wouldn't mind them if they aired them during the Summer at about 7pm but showing them between series in December and January is just lazy and means that there hasn't been a decent break by the time it returns in February.

I think is removal from the golf was decided for him. The feedback from fans and apparently from his fellow broadcast team precipitaded his removal.

He wasn't slightly bad, he was awful.

Nothing to panic about re TV Burp, it's only getting those ratings because it is against a strong BBC1 schedule.

It'd be getting much higher figures if Let's Dance wasn't opposite it.

Isn't it the same situation as Casualty, which is demanded to be axed every autumn!