Seven
18:00 Seven News 1.19m
18:30 Today Tonight 1.13m
19:00 Home and Away 0.96m
19:30 Heston's Mission Impossible 0.78m
20:30 Grey's Anatomy 0.76m
21:30 Desperate Housewives 0.60m

Nine
18:00 Nine News 1.00m
18:30 A Current Affair 0.92m
19:00 Two and a Half Men (R) 0.44m excluding Brisbane
19:30 RBT 0.73m
20:00 Getaway 0.69m
20:30 The Million Dollar Drop 0.74m
21:30 The Footy Show - 500th Episode 0.80m

Ten
17:00 Ten News at Five 0.59m
18:30 6:30 with George Negus 0.38m
19:00 The 7pm Project 0.72m
19:30 The Biggest Loser: Families 1.23m
*highest rating of the series so far.
20:30 The Good Wife 0.69m
21:30 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit 0.63m

GO!
19:30 The Big Bang Theory 0.40m
20:00 The Middle 0.21m
20:30 The Big Bang Theory 0.27m
21:00 The Inbetweeners 0.22m

Eleven
18:30 Neighbours 0.35m
19:00 Everybody Loves Raymond 0.21m
19:30 The Simpsons 0.20m
20:00 The Simpsons 0.24m
20:30 Stargate Universe 0.19m

Shares
Nine - 21.3%
Seven - 20.7%
Ten - 17.3%
GO! - 4.5%
Eleven - 4.4%

We're in April...what's it going to be like in July?! All the soaps struggled though EastEnders piulled in a decent share of the viewers. Monroe doesn't seem to like New Tricks as opposition and I think it'll be close to the axe now. I think they were really hoping on a House - but it's falling down around them.

New Tricks did better than in previous weeks due to the change of night. The football did ok for Five considering the lack of British clubs competiting.

Has anyone berated the BBC yet for their "aggresive scheduling" for putting a repeat of New Tricks against Monroe? I seem to recall that was said this time last year when the BBC wickedly put a NT repeat against Married, Single, Other.

Off topic but do you happen to have the final ratings for Mrs Brown's Boys. 21st, 28th March (ep5 + 6)

Ta

The only channel the BBC are hurting by the scheduling is BBC1. If they over saturate the schedule with the show then the new series will be hurt in the process.

I don't think "aggressive scheduling" was said about the New Tricks repeats but some people IIRC said that about Five Days starting its stripped series on BBC1 against episode 2 of MSO which knocked MSO down a lot. Similarly The Silence, another stripped series on BBC1, started against episode 2 of another 6-part ITV drama, Identity, which once again knocked down its ratings a lot and people said similar things about that. The ITV dramas should be holding up better against the New Tricks repeats - Monroe ought to have been more than 0.4m ahead last night.


Not at the moment, but I should be able to get them and post them in about 10 days time .

Maybe it's a compilation. I'm not sure, though.

I know what you mean. I barely look at New Tricks now as I suspect that it will be a repeat and I own them all on DVD so don't even bother looking. I remember missing the first episode of the last series for that very reason.

Regarding Waterloo Road returning on 4th May. That means Life of Riley will have to be moved from its 8.30pm timeslot mid-series. Presumably it'll be shifted back to 7.30pm but then one wonders, why didn't the BBC schedule it for 7.30pm in the first place right from episode 1? Makes no sense to me why they've put the first 3 episodes in a 8.30-9pm slot when 7.30-8pm would've been better and a more natural slot to put it in.

Thanks rzt!

The exact term aggresive scheduling may not have been used but I remember one poster, maybe more, criticising the BBC for continuing to air New Tricks repeats against MSO because NT was winning the slot. I think similar criticism was used against the BBC and New Tricks when it was against The Bill too.

The endless string of New Tricks repeats should hardly be a threat to a new drama on ITV - unless that new drama is creatively flawed and was failing to engage sufficient numbers of viewers in the first place ... which is exactly what Monroe, MSO and the utterly atrocious Identity all have in common. All of them were clearly cynically commisisoned by a team lacking in any vision or courage, and produced by teams desperately trying to prioritise making dramas that appear familiar to viewers over dramas that either have something to say or can offer a new take on an established genre.

Both those instances you cite are interesting in that the ITV dramas all had a head start - yet failed in their first episodes to spark sufficient viewer loyalty to sustain their own futures. British audiences are becoming more impatient, especially when it comes to drama and either a new series has to get it right first time (Downton Abbey) or involve some kind of thriller element (Marchlands) for it to thrive.

Monroe this week was painfuly predictable viewing, with the odd good line thrown in. And that's just not enough. I still suspect it may get a recommission if ITV's drama team has its way - but it would be pretty easy for their superiors to build a convincing case against doing so.

In the short term I think it's good for the BBC as they can make good ratings for nothing but in the long term I think it adversely affects the length of the series, on the whole.

Yeah, there was some criticism of the New Tricks/The Bill scheduling. Those were brand new episodes of New Tricks, not repeats like the ones recently or up against MSO.

I dont think its far to say that EE is failing, people are just watching it at 10pm instead of on BBC 1.

Makes you wonder which one is most at risk, though Home and Away aggregates 1.5 million for its daily showings so isn't such a basket case, although its glory days really were when Thatch was still PM. Hollyoaks looks like its doing what Neighbours did in Australia, flatlining. I do think, like Neighbours, it will possibly go to a digital channel and if that doesn't work after 12 months, then it could be adios.

However, as a long shot in two years time, should BB do well in Channel 5 terms, and Endemol decide to up the cost of the contract, would Channel 5 be prepared to axe Home and Away, whose ratings seem to be in a long, slow decline?

OK! TV ratings from Channel 5 and Parenthood ratings from 5* please?

Can I congratulate ITV for having a good couple of months. WAH and DOI have made them winners on Sunday nights, Fridays with the two soaps and Benidorm have assured them a good night, Take Me Out has been a quiet success with excellent demos, and the football has done well for them. Also BGT is just around the corner and should Man U get into the ECL final, then an audience of 16 million is guaranteed. Yes I know their breakfast and morning offerings are woeful, but the main channel is in far better shape than the pre Grade era and cheap filler like The Coronation St Family Album and dross like Soapstar Superstar filled the gaps between the soaps and the news.

I have the Radio Times from the week of the 1987 Grand National, and the billings are actually pedantically split up, so you get 12.15 Grandstand, 2.45 The Grand National. 3.50 Grandstand continued. Although of course there was plenty of Grand National build-up in the first part of Grandstand, and plenty of post-race analysis in the second part. Presumably it was only split like that for ratings purposes.


That 2002 race also gave ITV its lowest audience share ever, they were showing their crappy Soccer Saturday knock-off The Goal Rush at the time. Normally that would start at about 4.20 on ITV (it would be on ITV Sport all afternoon) but that week they presumably decided anything they showed there would flop, so they began it much earlier in the afternoon. I do remember during their half time sequence, they ran through all the stuff coming up on ITV Digital, including all the channel numbers, presumably assuming nobody would be watching on ITV itself.

Unfortunately I can't remember what that audience share actually was.


That's everyone, though, isn't it? It's a bloody big event. Maybe the rest of the coverage will be down but even if the nation spends the afternoon in the garden, one would suspect most of them would pop in for ten minutes or so. It's the Grand National, for heaven's sake.


Well, the sketch mentioned in that billing has certainly been on before, and the last series only ended at Christmas. But that's a bit crap because that series was repeated in that exact same slot when it was running.

I think the highest rating ever for the Grand National was the 1981 Bob Champion National with 18.5 million viewers.

Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy leads the US Masters golf by 3 shots as I type, which should ensure a healthy audience here at the weekend.
Sky Sports are limiting their ad breaks during live coverage to 60 seconds, I guess to ensure people don't flick over to the BBC.

Anyone?

Please bear in mind that C4 [SD] went off air on Sky/Freesat just after Part 1 of Hollyoaks and was down for about 20 minutes, so the entire second part was missed by everyone watching on those platforms. That's probably the reason for the awful rating. A breakdown would be helpful to see if the ratings suddenly fall after 18:40.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s....php?t=1458753

Yes I would imagine its impossible to aggressively schedule anything being shown for the third time.

It's almost as if he is under-predicting, to make a slightly lower rating actually look like a fantastic rating!