they should have realised this a long time ago

While we're on the subject of Benidorm you never did answer my question on it being classed as a drama. Since when?

I always thought it was a comedy.

New extended football league deal for Sky Sports for 3 years from 2012/13 season.

Only mentions that negotiations are ongoing for free to air highlights, so presumably no live Football League or Carling Cup matches on FTA anymore.

Does the Carling Cup Final have to be on FTA ?

http://www.football-league.co.uk/foo...,10794,00.html

No, the final doesn't have to be live on FTA.

Mind you it might be art compared with what Dirty Des has planned for Channel Five: wall to wall Big Brother with, knowing him, a far more sexual and foul mouthed take on the format and some rubbish about lesbians in a nightclub. Actually I was quite a big Five fan, but it looks to me to like it's going to become a televised Daily Star. Surely investing in drama, comedy and films would be more worthwhile than reality trash even ITV 2 would avoid.

...and as it has the highest share of older viewers than any other channel, I would think many put it on and fall asleep (that's what happens in my family).

Also, they watch the same programmes over and over again, because they forget whodunnit (or were asleep by the end of the programme).

ITV3 is not available from relay transmitters, if I remember correctly, so that would put it at a little bit of a disadvantage against ITV2.

Agreed on drama and comedy but less films.....

Yes, but maybe blockbusters to pull in 4-5 million viewers and help produce some decent home grown shows. You look at Five's schedule and I would say 80 pc of it is imported. I know BB and the Candy Bar will knock this down considerably, but these are shows with no repeat potential,

Solid ratings for both Waking The Dead and Lewis. Waking The Dead will probably end up with a consolidated rating close to 7m and I expect Lewis will timeshift over 7m (even taking the STV opt-out into consideration). Both good performances given the respective competition they faced and as I've said before, WTD will be a pretty big loss to the Beeb. I can, however, see its spin-off The Body Farm pulling in a consistent ~5m in the overnights if it's scheduled well.

The 7-9pm block for BBC1 did very well and will help BBC1 win most Sunday primetimes from now until The X Factor returns. The Cube did as I expected really - a bit on the low side but in line with how the Sunday episode rated earlier this year without TXF lead-in/out. I can see the reasoning behind putting The Cube on Sundays at 7pm rather than pre-BGT Saturdays because last year, ITV were only getting 2.5-3m in that slot during Spring/Summer for shows like Survival and The Seasons, so if its figures hold up for the rest of the series, it'll be a million improvement over how the slot was averaging last year.

I'm a bit surprised Louis Theroux did so well against the tough competition as I thought it'd have been squeezed out. Was expecting something in the low/mid 2's so it did very well. Channel 5 had quite a bad evening, especially High School Musical 3 which fell below expectations. As Dancc said, maybe it would've been better to air it during the holidays.


Since series 3 when Benidorm went to a one hour format, the production company who makes the show, Tiger Aspect, have been calling it a 'comedy drama' as stated here. The writer, Derren Litten, has also said on his blog/Twitter that he now regards it more of a comedy drama than a sitcom to reflect the way he's adapted the show into the hour slot. ITV has also been using the 'comedy drama' tag for the show on screen such as here and also on their website here, although they have also called it a 'sitcom' from time to time too. So it's one of those 50/50 ones - as I've said previously I can completely understand if people still want to call it a 'sitcom' but as stated above, people associated with the programme have been calling it a 'comedy drama' in the last couple of years and that's why I included it in the drama list.

What they should do is make Mondays at 9pm for UK drama only. And Fridays at 9pm & 9:30pm for UK comedy only.

If they do that then they will become "established" with the audience.

Pity about the Carling Cup considering the strong rating this years final got on BBC One - it appears Sky were quite keen for all the live rights to be exclusive.

Otherwise it sounds like a good deal for the Football League considering the current economic climate etc.

Sky saying the deal is worth £195m.

New BBC1 8-part drama commissioned, 'Death in Paradise':

Yikes. One seriously unhappy customer and the deal hasn't even been formally announced yet. Talk about an overreaction! Channel 5 would have expected a certain level of backlash regarding the Big Brother deal, but this highly cynical line you are taking just makes you come across like a hater. In another thread you even mooted the possibility of it reviving Love Island at the same time - absolutely no chance of this, so why post it? Big Brother is (apparently) coming back because even though the audience fell, it still had a good solid following at the end and a healthy audience profile.

For me, it's a win win. Channel 5 is simply expanding and doing more things outside its usual programming areas. If you don't like reality tv, then presumably you will avoid Big Brother. But it's not as if the movies, factual content and US drama are just going to suddenly disappear overnight. I'm sure there will be less during BB season, but they will very much want to use it to expose more viewers than ever before to the channel's most successful output, in the same way that Channel 4 did.

This in turn will help generate more revenue for the channel and they might be able to commission more ambitious projects in the genres you outline - such as homegrown drama and comedy.

But I'm afraid this romantic view you might have had that Channel 5 could carry on as it was and not making any money is a bit of an unrealistic one. It might be a "tired old reality show" to you, yet it's still capable of audiences in excess of 3 million viewers night after night, well above the average for the channel's current highest rated show CSI (2.4m). Even accounting for some decline when the programme jumps ship, there is no doubting the serious ratings potential that exists.

Obviously I can't say with any certainty that Big Brother is the answer to Channel 5's underachievement performance wise, nobody can, but I can fully appreciate why they are going down this road and the benefits it could provide.

If you hate it that much, go and watch another station. Channel 5 are not going to miss losing you if they gain another 3 at the same time! And "Dirty Des" as you affectionately call him will be laughing all the way to the bank.

---
click here to play the TV Ratings Prediction Game – new season starts tomorrow, everyone welcome.

French drama Spiral rated really well on BBC4 on Saturday night with 574,000 (2.7%) and 464,000 (2.4%) for its two episodes. That's well up on how its previous series premiered with on BBC4 (97,800 (0.55%)) and higher than what any episode of The Killing got in the overnights recently.

80%?! Are you serious? Ofcom would take a very dim view if that were the case.

Half that and you might be getting warmer.

---
click here to play the TV Ratings Prediction Game – new season starts tomorrow, everyone welcome.

Good point. I'm surprised ITV haven't swapped ITV1+1 and ITV3 around already so that the latter is available on those transmitters instead. Seems strange for the timeshift channel to take priority.

---
click here to play the TV Ratings Prediction Game – new season starts tomorrow, everyone welcome.

The proportion is still very high and a lot higher than the other four main networks. However, I suppose being a relative newcomer and traditionally being short of money, Five has never done much in the way of new drama, their soap Family Affairs struggled and died with little comment and the remake of Minder flopped. I suppose it is easier for them to show imports, films and reality as these are a lot cheaper.

Don't forget The Wright Stuff is nearly one twelfth of the weekday schedule at almost 2 hours. There is an hour or so of News, OK TV and The Vanessa Show which is about 3 hours more a weekday. Thats even before primetime is considered (Gadget Show, Hotel Inspector, Travelogues), or the non-imports on Milkshake. And perhaps opening a can of worms, but Five do part fund Neighbours, so it's not an import in the traditional TV use of the word

Right, so why are you kicking the boot in all of a sudden?

If you accept Channel 5 is stifled by its low budget, then you surely must also accept that a show that has the ability (at the right price) to make them a shed load of money is worth pursuing?

The only reason it stopped being as profitable for Channel 4 was due to Endemol greed. In its first few years it only cost £10m a year to make and was all the better for it. The last few years which were crap were costing as much as £60m.

---
click here to play the TV Ratings Prediction Game – new season starts tomorrow, everyone welcome.

I think you're right to be honest. Don't forget that it's already aired twice on FX where it rated pretty highly for them on it's first run (and as much as i liked the show, i wont be rewatching it on C5, i imagine most of the others who watched it on FX will feel the same). I can't see the C5 airing being very well rated at all really, regardless of the amount of adverts it's had on C5.

I wonder at this. Do British audiences warm to series set abroad? It seems a big undertaking to me.

True Blood pulled similar numbers on FX and still went on to have a relatively successful first series on Channel 4. House I think was another on Hallmark that went onto perform really well for Channel 5. And there are other examples. Even Dexter wasn't doing too badly for ITV, but it was probably more costly than their usual post-news fare. So I disagree. The successful run it's had on pay TV will have little effect on the FTA numbers. Indeed, it may actually help through those that have already seen it recommending it to those that haven't yet.

It may not rate very well, but if it doesn't, it won't be because of the run on little watched FX.

---
click here to play the TV Ratings Prediction Game – new season starts tomorrow, everyone welcome.

BB is going to be wall to wall on the five network. The clues are in the budget. Out of a total budget of £250m, BB will account for £40m. When you add in the Neighbours, H&A, and CSI comitted cost you will have used up £100m out of the full £250m. Out of the remaining £150m you would allocate probably £10m to news currently, £20m to sports rights, maybe another £15m to films and say £10m to kids and £10m for daytime. Suddenly you are left with £85m for everything else. At best that buys you 170 hours of new programming at £500k an hour so thats about 3 hours per week of primetime content apart from the pre-mentioned.