Noel's House Party finished in 1999, Jim Davidson's Generation Game finished I think a bit after that, but Strictly Come Dancing didn't start until 2004.

Anyone remember what the mainstay of BBC1's Autumn & Winter Saturday nights were in the interim?

BBC HD is a very odd channel. 12:40am for Lead Balloon? Incredible. Then next week its back at 10pm as usual as if nothing happened!

Not a great way to encourage people to follow a series on HD. It's no surprise that the BBC's HD figures in particular are so tiny when they do stuff like that.

The Generation Game ended in 2002, athough its appearances were sporadic for the last few years, it would appear for a few weeks, go off for a month or so, come back again for six weeks, then take another three week break and so on.

The planned replacement in 1999 of course was Red Alert, but that flopped, and then a bit later it would be a right mix of odds and sods. Friends Like These was the most consistent show, probably, also Dog Eat Dog remarkably managed to get three series out in twelve months - April 2001, September 2001, January 2002 - and there were a few other quizzes like The Waiting Game, Here Comes The Sun, The Chair and so forth. There were also about ten million repeats of Only Fools and Horses.

In fact given that four five years they didn't really have a staple they did tolerably well, I suppose, you had the lottery shows every week of course and Casualty, so it was only often a question of filling 5.30 to 7.30, then films and dramas and Parky went out after nine.

Here's a random example, Saturday 2nd November 2002...

5.35 Dog Eat Dog (the last series)
6.10 Only Fools and Horses (in previous weeks that and Dog Eat Dog had swapped over, clearly Dog Eat Dog was flopping)
6.40 The Chair
7.30 The National Lottery Winning Lines
8.15 Casualty
9.05 Silent Witness (previously they'd been running two parters on Saturdays and Sundays, but this was a repeat edited into a two hour special, preumably as there was no Parky for some reason).

Meanwhile, ITV had the final flop series of Blind Date at six, Popstars The Rivals at seven, Millionaire at eight, the Popstars results at nine, a Stars In Their Eyes special at 9.30 and The Premiership at 10.30.

Gary Barlow is deadly dull - I know Simon Cowell isn't Jim Carrey but he has personality - whereas Gary Barlow sadly hasn't - Gary has a voice for singing not speaking.

Best not to think about TXF until October - the ITVistas will let you know when the time is right.

I think it needs to be BBC2 HD in primetime 6pm onwards - up to that point show cbbc/cbeebies kids programmes in the afternoon. Time to get rid of the constant trailers.

To be fair, I wasn't comparing them against each other...

That Doctor Who went up in the overnights, despite clashing mostly with the BGT Final and with ITV having hooked up to 8m for the England match which finished just as DW started, surely merits the description "very respectable"?

No?

Im pretty sure this series (Matt Smith's second) is higher than Tennant's second series. And that is without mentioning the iPlayer figures as iPlayer didnt exist back in 2007 for Tennant's second series.


Interesting point you make there regarding another stripped show. 2 stripped shows in 2 weeks may have put some people off Injustice, I know that if Injustice was weekly I probably would have watched but 5 episodes in 5 days is too much for me and maybe others after BGT week.

Could soemone please tell BBC 3, I dont care what is being said on Twitter about Angry Boys, maybe the french have the right idea.

Reasonable performances from BBC1, ITv1 and Channel 5 in the 9pm slot last night. Channel 4 really exceeded expectations! BBC2 was the unfortunate channel to miss out. The soaps rated well, but will see a dip for the rest of the week. I think Injustice needs to hold above 5m tonight considering the opposition to have a chance for the rest of the week - it has a much tougher test tomorrow in The Apprentice.

By the way, what are the odds on Cheryl Cole appearing on Strictly Come Dancing this year?

Seven
18:00 Seven News 1.45m
18:30 Today Tonight 1.29m
19:00 Home & Away 1.15m
19:30 Australia's Got Talent 1.93m
21:00 Winners & Losers 1.32m

Nine
18:00 Nine News 1.10m
18:30 A Current Affair 1.08m
19:00 The Big Bang Theory (R) 0.98m
19:30 The Big Bang Theory (R) 0.84m
20:00 Customs 0.68m
20:30 Sea Patrol: Damage Control 0.71m

Ten
17:00 Ten News at Five 0.67m
18:30 6:30 with George Negus 0.47m
19:00 7pm Project 0.94m
19:30 MasterChef Australia 1.44m
20:30 NCIS (R) 0.92m

Eleven
18:30 Neighbours 414,000
*new record high since channel switch;
*peaked at 0.5m.

Surely Australia's Got Talent is going to get over the 2m mark by the end of the series.That's a superb figure. MasterChef did ok but is clearly second best to Seven's show. Have to say Big Bang Theory held up pretty well considering.

Neighbours is performing very impressively on Eleven - obviously the show's improving. It makes me wonder what would've happened if Susan Bower could've got a grip on the soap earlier; would it still be on TEN?

I bet Ten will be glad when AuGT is over as it is hurting Masterchef. Winners and Losers doing well but it's not exactly compatible. Dowton Abbey or Rafter would easily get 2m in that slot.

Speaking of Rafters, isn't it returning soon?

that is what I cant work out, why has Susan Bower suddenly been able to improve the show as much as she has, 400,000 + is a massive acheivement, and way beyond what people were predicting for ELEVEN. Its way beyond anything I predctied, however its possible I understestimated the strenght of the Aussie digital channels.

Nine seems to air Big Bang Theory alot.

Yeah, it's the finale of W&L next week, so I expect Rafters will follow on the 21st. Seven are going to be killing the competition on Tuesdays for a while, especially with NCIS on repeats now.

I don't know much about Australian TV Ratings but is that good for AGT Because it looks quite poor to me?

Population of Australia is 20m, a third of the UK so naturally ratings are going to be smaller but also the culture there is more outdoorsy even in Winter. News and sports tend to do well ratings wise.

2 million is pretty good for one of the main channels, I think its still pretty much the case that anything over 1 million is a hit.

Channel 5 has been promoting Castle quite heavily, I think if it does Mentalist numbers, Channel 5 will be very happy. I hope it's season 1 and 2 rather than just season 1.

Reading the 1990s Saturday night posts earlier, you do get all nostalgic when you watch a few classic Saturday night opening title sequences:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv7qY...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFCKJu-NCFU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7uCZ...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVsTM...eature=related

They don't make em like this any more. And you got this lot every Saturday night on BBC1 for months.

There's more magic in the 2 or 3 minutes it takes to watch those YouTube links than there's been on BBC1 or ITV on Saturdays since about 1999...

Yes it is quite sad looking back at all TV Shows. I Can remember sitting on the Sofa watching Stars in their eyes and Sabrina on Saturday teatime. TV Now is crap compered to what it was like when i was younger.

all good shows there, however who would have thought Big Break would be a hit.

Er, Robbie...Casualty is still on BBC1 every Saturday night.

I miss The Generation Game and Big Break was one of the only shows I could stand Jim Davidson on. I thought he worked well with John Virgo.

EDIT: Actually I didn't mind him on The Generation Game either but he had big boots to fill following Bruce.

Chloe Sevigny (of HBO's Big Love) has signed on in the lead role of Sky Atlantic's first UK commission, Hit and Miss. Sky are apparently hoping that the show, produced by Paul Abbott, could make its way across the Atlantic.

http://www.deadline.com/2011/06/chlo...-distribution/

Thanks. Holby City (well the whole network) in the 8pm slot has averaged 23.9% so far this year so looks like River City is very slightly lower than Holby.

I was wondering, do ITV get any money from international channels for the '...Got Talent' format or would it go straight to Cowell?