Except the viewing techniques for here compared to America are quite different, their primetime appears to run from 8pm to 11:30pm, our primetime runs from 7pm to 10:30pm.

I'm not convinced about any kind of major decline for BGT in fact I suspect numbers for the first audition show at least will be pretty similar to last years with people wanting to get a look at the new judging panel- how the ratings go from there will I suspect largely depend on how people take to them. Let's face it BGT is not going to face any competition from the beeb with SYTYCD/ Secret Fortune- I'm guessing there's no scheduled clash between Doctor Who and BGT.

Can I put in an advanced request for whomever is writing the DS article tomorrow to put in a 15 minute peak for the Golf on BBC2 as I suspect it'll be substantially higher than the average. Ta.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a peak north of 3m, maybe tipping 4m.

The first huge difference with The Walking Dead in the US is that AMC launched it on Sunday 31st October - Halloween. Which played well for promotion seeing as it's about zombies! Also, Sunday nights have a reputation for high quality serialised cable drama. And it's increasingly the case that 10pm every night of the week is being taken over by cable and their slightly darker, "edgier" series.

That being said, I think the late running is far more of an issue than the start time. But we'll see how it goes.

^ The Halloween point is a valid one but it grew a lot from the pilot, I guess due to word of mouth etc. There was no indication from its 'overnight' performance that the Americans found the timeslot a problem anyway, far from it.

Having watched The Walking Dead I'm even more convinced they got the timeslot right. It was very gory in places, and therefore better suited to 10pm. Simply not a 9pm show and would have clashed with the similarly titled BBC show.

As for day of the week, I don't honestly believe it would fair much better on a typical weeknight at 10pm than it would on a Sunday, and since this had the feel of a movie, it is a good fit for the night - Thirteen Ghosts was an excellent choice of movie to follow.

Remember this late finish is just for this first episode, and from next week onwards it cuts off at a more sensible 11:05pm (probably 11pm minus adverts).

Brilliant show though and a welcome addition to the already excellent roster of Channel 5 imports. Why pay a subscription to Sky/Virgin when quality shows like this are arriving on free-to-air just 6 months after pay TV transmission

Sytycd may have performed poor last night , but it's no2 on the iplayer. I still think there is a chance for it.

Seven
18:00 Seven News 1.44m
18:30 Sunday Night 1.26m
19:30 Border Security 1.30m
20:00 The Force 1.27m
20:30 Bones (R) 0.81m

Nine
18:00 Nine News Sunday 1.38m
18:30 A Current Affair Sunday 0.95m
*highest rated Sunday edition to date.
19:00 Customs 0.85m
19:30 60 Minutes 1.17m
20:30 The Mentalist 0.87m

Ten
18:00 Ten Evening News 0.35m
18:30 The Biggest Loser: Families 1.11m
*top rated show of the night in all key demographics.
19:30 Modern Family (R) 0.87m
20:00 Bondi Rescue 0.89m
20:30 Hawaii Five-O 0.67m

ABC1
18:30 Chris Humfrey's Wild Life 0.28m
19:00 ABC News 0.77m
19:30 Human Planet 0.70m
20:30 Midsomer Murders 1.23m

One
17:55 Formula One: Malaysian Grand Prix 0.27m

The Walking Dead should do good numbers, they've done a stellar job promoting it. I think at 6 episodes, they're not stuck with it for long if it underperforms.

Everything was great tonight - the ident and break bumpers looked fantastic and really added to the whole experience. If nothing else the people who watched will have come away with a better impression of Channel 5. Most channels don't go to anywhere near that level of effort for a series launch.

I can't wait to see how BBC1 schedule it and Doctor Who - will the latter give the dance show a leg up or will it be given an early evening slot where it may struggle to pull in the numbers?

I alway think their promotion for FlashForward was top notch, actually most of their launches are really good.

Shame we lost some of the programme specific idents like the one for The Mentalist when the new graphics package came in.

But yeah, it does seem to be tradition these days for a major new Channel 5 programme to get this kind of treatment. They really do chuck everything they can at it to give it the best possible start.

Only slightly more than 25% of UK homes have Sky Sports.

For the BBC audience to fall anywhere near 32% COULD imply just about every home with Sky Sports chose to watch on Sky. Now that obviously would NOT be the case because Sky Sports homes would be more likely to watch the golf than an average UK home. But even so it's actually a pretty large drop for the BBC.

We'll have to wait for Sky's figures for rounds 3 and 4 to compare them with rounds 1 and 2 when Sky had exclusive coverage.

As for a comparison of the quality of Sky's broadcast vs the BBC's, I suggest you read the thread in the sports section. But 2 quick points provide an indication:

1) BBC began continuous golf coverage 11 minutes after Sky.

2) Every shot shown by the BBC in the first 30 minutes of its continuous golf coverage had already been shown by Sky approx 3 minutes earlier.

See link and start reading from post 115:

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s...1454144&page=5

I think Palin has been spending more time with his family, his last series New Europe was done so he could film it in bits rather than one big journey. Brazil sounds interesting, BBC One are not exactly short of big landmark factual, Frozen Planet airs later this year and most likely on Sundays.


I liked The Gadget Show one and The CSI one, I hope they could come back in some form.

I think if Channel 5 put a lot of promotion into a new British drama with billboards, idents and trails then it would well for its first episode. I think we discussed in a previous thread that they should do a pilot season to find a potential new series or link up with various channels internationally to fund a series.

Five should do a new series of Murder Prevenation. </end>

Indeed the BBC seemed to be running late for some bizzare reason. Also the BBC seemed to fill the CBS break with recorded features. I was watching the CBS commentary and during breaks they had other player recaps and scoreboard updates (presume this was the CBS international feed )

The CBS commentary was very good - professional but none of the old buffers stuff that Peter Alias is increasingly prone to

Nederland 1
18:10 Studio Sport 819,000
19:00 Studio Sport (Football League) 2.68m
20:00 NOS Journal 3.46m
20:30 Reunion 2.59m
21:25 TROS TV Show 1.63m
22:15 Studio Football 1m

Nederland 2
20:15 In Turkey 488,000
21:00 NOS Journal Extra 732,000
22:00 Newshour 510,000

Nederland 3
21:20 Amsterdam and Many Others 381,000

RTL4
17:25 Carlo & Irene: Life 4 You 531,000
19:30 News 1m
20:00 The Pfaffs 790,000
21:30 Postcode Lottery: Millionaire Hunt 1.43m

RTL5
20:35 Ultimate Dance Battle 434,000

SBS6
19:00 25 Most Bizarre Celebrities 399,000
20:30 Wegmisbruikers 988,000
21:30 Crime Reporter: Peter R. de Vries 1.3m
22:50 Heart of The Netherlands 1.1m
23:05 Behind the Scenes with Peter R. de Vries 813,000

RTL7
09:55 Forumal 1: Malaysian GP 405,000

Dutch TV looks worse then Australian! Not much drama pr comedy there

Reunion is a huge success on Dutch TV, I'm surprised the BBC or ITV are not looking at it, the BBC having taken the idea for The Generation Game from the Dutch in 1970 where it was called ''One Out of Eight'' because eight families were competing and the show ran to two hours.Apparently the Dutch were greatly flattered at the idea of the BBC adapting the format.

Personally, what they could have done is started to repeat Urban Gothic straight after The Walking Dead. Then they could bill Sundays as thier "gore" night.

Drama and comedy is rife during the week, whereas Sunday traditionally is a more "reality" based night. Amsterdam and Many Others is a great drama which usually airs on Ned.2. but was displaced by a newscast on the shooting in a shopping mall on Saturday. That is also why the news on the various channels is higher than normal.

Reunion (de Reunie) is a big hit but not as big a Boer zoekt vrouw (5 million viewers week in week out) which as you know has been done by a UK broadcaster in the shape of Farmer wants a wife.

Dutch TV is very splintered though, we have ten main terrestrial channels all shining on respective nights though the main three (Ned1/RTL4/SBS6) duke it out for the masses. The Ned channels are public broadcasters (1/2/3) RTL has 4 channels (RTL4/5/7/8) and SBS has three (SBS6/Net5/Veronica). The other channels in each portfolio aim for demos. Ned2 is in depth (BBC2/4) Ned3 is youth (BBC3) RTL5 and Net5 both aim at young females RTL7 and Veronica are both aimed at the male demo and RTL8 also aims at females but in the older demos. It is difficult to go for BIG ratings with such a diverse range of channels available but they can be achieved now and then.

Sunday 10th April 2011
BBC One
06:00 - Breakfast: 0.7m (30.5%)
08:00 - Formula 1: The Malaysian Grand Prix: 3.5m (41.1%)
11:15 - Country Tracks: 1.4m (19.0%)
12:15 - The Politics Show: 0.9m (12.6%)
13:15 - The Story of Vaisaikhi: 0.6m (8.7%)
13:45 - Formula 1: The Malaysian Grand Prix: 1.0m (12.7%)
15:45 - Escape to the Country: 0.8m (8.8%)
16:45 - Points of View: 0.9m (9.1%)
16:55 - Songs of Praise: 1.3m (12.1%)
17:30 - BBC News: 2.5m (19.7%)
18:00 - Nigel Slater's Simple Suppers: 2.0m (14.2%)
18:30 - The Boat That Guy Built: 2.4m (15.0%)
19:00 - Countryfile: 5.4m (26.2%)
20:00 - Antiques Roadshow: 5.4m (22.6%)
21:00 - Waking the Dead: 5.2m (20.6%)
22:00 - BBC News: 4.3m (19.8%)
22:25 - Match of the Day 2: 2.0m (12.5%)
23:25 - FILM: The Hunted: 0.7m (9.6%)

BBC Two
18:00 - The Truth About Lions: 1.1m (7.1%)
19:00 - Golf: The Masters: 2.9m (14.4%)
00:10 - Frank Skinner's Opinionated: 0.4m (7.9%)

ITV (inc ITV+1)
18:45 - ITV News & Weather: 2.7m (15.7%)
19:00 - The Cube: 3.7m (17.1%)
* 3.5m excluding +1
20:00 - Lewis: 5.6m (22.3%)
* 5.5m excluding +1
22:00 - ITV News & Weather: 2.3m (10.3%)
22:15 - FILM: Atonement: 1.0m (6.8%)

C4 (inc C4+1)
17:30 - Time Team: 1.3m (8.5%)
18:30 - Channel 4 News: 0.9m (5.2%)
19:00 - Come Dine with Me: 1.8m (7.1%)
20:00 - Civilization: Is the West History?: 0.6m (2.3%)
21:00 - Country House Rescue: 1.5m (5.2%)
22:00 - FILM: Wedding Crashers: 0.8m (5.1%)

Five
17:50 - FILM: Mr Deeds: 0.9m (5.6%)
19:40 - FILM: Hellboy: 1.5m (6.2%)
22:00 - The Walking Dead: 1.4m (8.2%)

All include HD.

Pretty good start for The Walking Dead, only slightly below True Blood's 1.6m opener on Channel 4 at Halloween [2009]. I also believe it could grow its audience from here.

Hellboy did really well too, creating a super strong Sunday night for Channel 5 and blowing Channel 4 out of the water. Looking at the other late night ratings, it looks like The Walking Dead might have beat ITV1 and even BBC One at times during the broadcast as well. Good stuff.

BBC Two's conclusion to the golf was very popular last night - up about 700k year-on-year, seemingly unaffected by Sky's alternative coverage.

Very good ratings for the F1, 4.5m makes it the most watched Malaysian Grand Prix since the race began in 1999. Solid for BBC1 between 7pm to 10pm, constantly above 5m. The Cube doing very poorly, its share is nothing to write home about either. Shows how much certain shows need The X Factor have a lead-in (and even then, it only just gets 5m). Lewis did alright, but I suspect the Golf dented it - as I'm guessing it averaged over ~3m a lot of the time.

Come Dine with Me did okay for C4, but after that nothing to write home about. Channel 5 comfortably above 1m in primetime, so good for them.

As expected a lot was down again last night. BBC1 experienced a dip, but nothing that bad and everything was still comfortably above 5m. Fantastic for the masters, which seemed to dent Lewis considerably. 5.6m is a very poor figure for Lewis, possibly the lowest ever?! It needs to be above 6m I think.

Another poor night for Ch4, but Ch5 held up well. Hellboy performed very well and a decent start for The Walking Dead too. Watching it last night I agree with others that the whole experience was excellent with the idents and break bumpers etc. I was watching CSI:NY beforehand and it was constantly trailed through that, which probably made me watch The Walking Dead. I also think that it would have done much better if it was stripped across the week, possibly starting a week today at 9pm, then continuing at 10pm for the rest of the week. I think the premiere audience would have been nearer 2m then too. I'm rather impressed with Ch5 atm, and by next week there will be four shows that I'm watching on the channel (H&A, CSI:NY, Hotel Inspector and The Walking Dead)-probably more than any other channel which is surprising.