ITV is a business not a publicly funded organisation and needs to make a profit. Crime drama is popular, the viewers like it, so why wouldn't they commission more? Anyway, a lot of the new stuff is coming through due to stuff like A Touch of Frost, Taggart, Blue Murder, The Bill and Foyle's War ending for various reasons (some axed, some not decided by ITV).


Why? Look at the ratings, they speak for themselves. Not all crime dramas do well anyway, they have to be good and capture the public just like any other genre as there have been numerous crime flops in recent years. Case Sensitive was very good by the way, not 'bog standard' as you've described it.

Besides, crime isn't the only genre ITV does, look at Downton Abbey, Wild at Heart, Doc Martin, Primeval, Marchlands, Monroe etc. I know any slight praise of ITV gets you frothing at the mouth but it's worth noting that BBC1's only returning drama hits since at least 2008 have been Wallander, Sherlock, Silk, Garrow's Law, Luther and Upstairs Downstairs. So apart from the remake, they're all crime too.


I agree, two and a half hours of factual is too much. I haven't seen Military Driving School so can't comment but Countrywise should be 30 mins (but at a consistent 3.0m with +1 it's doing better than most other stuff they've put there!) and Home Is Where The Heart Is is strangled by having minor celebrities all over it.

71 Degrees North did OK at 9pm last Autumn and Family Fortunes was wasted against Strictly at 6pm last year so I think they should extend ASFF to an hour and air it at 8pm with 71 Degrees at 9pm. Could do 3.5-4m and would be a bit different.

With the Champions League moving back to Tuesdays next year I doubt we'll see anything too radical. I think when the CL moves, Midsomer should move too as it has done fine against Holby before. Then they can start afresh on Wednesdays, and with no EE and Corrie at 7:30pm perhaps they can be a bit more daring with the night.

ABC:
8pm - The Middle - 7.66m (2.4)
8.30pm - The Middle (R) - 5.89m (1.8)
9pm - Modern Family - 10.08m (4.0)
9.30pm - Cougar Town - 5.38m (2.0)
10pm - Happy Endings - 3.78m (1.6)
10.30pm - Happy Endings - 3.10m (1.3)

CBS:
8pm - Criminal Minds (R) - 6.32m (1.4)
9pm - Criminal Minds - 12.53m (3.3)
10pm - Criminal Minds: Suspect Behaviour - 8.35m (2.0)

FOX:
8pm - American Idol - 23.04m (7.2)

NBC:
8pm - Minute To Win It - 3.47m (1.0)
9pm - Minute To Win It (R) - 2.90m (0.9)
10pm - Law & Order: SVU - 9.00m (2.8)

Tvbythenumbers

The Middle turned in its best numbers since March, while season finales of Criminal Minds and Law & Order: SVU performed well.

Modern Family would flop on BBC1. Its a hardly a smash hit on Sky1 let alone being able to get 5m to quantify a hit on BBC1.

Life of Riley has always been crap but My Family has been a huge success, running for 11 years. The quality of My Family dipped arounda few years ago and viewers began to drift off. The last series was actually the best for a few years quality wise IMO but its had its day.


I dont think it needed to be turned into a BBC vs ITV argument.

ITV is fine doing crime drama as they rate well and as a business they arent going to turn down shows thta make good money. But, I dont think ITV deserves a huge amount of praise for a drama revival when making a detective show that gets good ratings is very easy to achieve. A well known lead actor and satisfactory plot is all that is needed.

Aided by a 2 hour runtime, American Idol was up from last week to a 7.2 which will likely climb further to a 7.4 final - which would be its best rating since March. With a stronger crop of contestants, Idol is rallying towards the end unlike last year and a 7.4 would mean a 10% rise from the equivalent episode last year - by far its best increase for a regular episode vs last year. In total viewers, the improvement will be even more significant, potentially an increase of 4m. This season of Idol has skewed older than ever, 41% of the Idol audience were aged 18-49 last night with the comparable night last year having 47% of its audience in that demo. But the increase in total numbers was so significant last night that the demo was comfortably up as well.

Based on my unscientific projections for next week, season 10 of Idol will be up ~5% in total viewers compared to last year and total viewer numbers for the final will likely be in the high 20's and top the premiere episode. Season 9 fell 5% from season 8 so this is an encouraging improvement (even if it doesn't matter, it's nice for press releases!).

The decline in the key demo of adults 18-49 will continue but at a slower pace. Season to date Idol is down 6% but this may improve to 5% after the final. Through the auditions and Hollywood week, ratings in the demo were down 13% so FOX will be encouraged by the strength of this season as it progressed, increasingly posting positive year-on-year gains. The season-to-season decline is also lower than the trend for Idol. And the final should post an improvement of at least 10% from last years show.

Idol will retain its crown as the #1 show on US TV in total viewers and the #1 entertainment show in adults 18-49. But NBC's Sunday Night Football will take its place at the top of the overall table in A18-49

With viewers up but young viewers down for the season, the audience has obviously aged. Where season 8 & 9 had 47-48% of the audience in the key demo, this season that has fallen to around 42-43%.

The Voice on Tuesday night drew 10.01m (4.5) - 59% of the audience being 18-49.

I think Derek was suggesting a UK version rather than BBC1 buying the US show. He has a point, Modern Family is terrific and a British remake could do really well if executed properly. It does quite well on Sky1, around 0.8m in the officials on Friday nights against Corrie which is pretty good, and places it amongst their top shows.

Yeah, last year's series of My Family was the best for quite some time, but for some reason the BBC withdrew its trail support, so viewers weren't tempted back.

According to the head of comedy commissioning, returning sitcoms only get trailed if there are major cast changes.

In my experience, returning sitcoms only get trailed until they fall out of favour at the BBC.

Which we don't need as three nights a week soaps run until 9pm and, I think, Tuesday is the night when ITV becomes a bit more PSB. Should yet an another Coronation St and Emmerdale episode be commissioned for Tuesdays, then the accusations will be that ITV is becoming lazy and pandering to soap addicts.
ITV1 seems to be in a lot better health than it was a few years ago simply by showing better drama and more factual programmes.

Who wants some interesting information? http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2011/...w-of-all-time/

Only 4.75 million people watched the first episode of Doctor Who 'live'. Looking at this list: http://wordpress-uploads.mediatel.co...rded_shows.gif

I've found the overnights we got and 'translated' it into that format there:

"Raw" Live Figures
01/05/10 - Britain's Got Talent: 9.29m (41.2%)
* 0.88m watched it before 2am
* overnight figure: 10.17m (43.4%)

02/10/10 - The X Factor: 10.32m (43.8%)
* 1.57m watched it before 2am
* overnight figure: 11.89m (47.3%)

10/12/10 - Coronation Street: 10.96m (44.8%)
* 1.36m watched it before 2am
* overnight figure: 12.32m (47.7%)

11/12/10 - Strictly Come Dancing: 9.19m (35.5%)
* 2.39m watched it before 2am
* overnight figure: 11.58m (41.1%)

25/12/10 - Come Fly with Me: 9.18m (38.3%)
* 1.12m watched it before 2am
* overnight figure: 10.30m (41.1%)

25/12/10 - EastEnders: 9.91m (39.8%)
* 1.49m watched it before 2am
* overnight figure: 11.40m (43.2%)

03/04/11 - Waking the Dead: 4.71m (18.7%)
* 0.72m watched before 2am
* overnight figure: 5.43m (21%)

23/04/11 - Doctor Who: 4.75m (29.7%)
* 1.77m watched it before 2am
* overnight figure: 6.52m (36.7%)

Percentages are estimates based on multiple calculations. Interesting though, I'm sure you will agree! The percentage shares will all be higher, of course people timeshift other programmes, but interest to see the amount of timeshifting that goes on now and why overnights can me so little.

The Europa League did okay against The Apprentice and BSA, bet Channel 5 are hoping there is English teams in the final next year.

I reckon Doctor Who seems to have hit its natural limit of 7 millon including timeshift. The Matt Smith stories have been good but not outstanding in the way most of the David Tennant ones were. I'm not suggesting the show is doomed and doing a Colin Baker, but I doubt we'll see 10 million for a non Christmas episode again. Also the use of two companions seems to be taking away the Doctor/ female companion dynamic that you had with Rose.

Excellent rating for The Apprentice yesterday - I'd thought the tougher competition from ITV1 compared to National Movie Awards would dent it from last week's rating but it actually increased a little. Waterloo Road held up well partly against the Soap Awards with another 5m rating. I think The Soap Awards did decently considering a couple of years ago it got 5m against the same opposition, and last night's rating was almost the same as last year's rating which was up against weaker competition. Channel 4 pulled in a respectable audience at 9pm given the tough competition it faced, and I think it'd be rating in the mid/high 2's against weaker opposition.


I agree. I don't think that Wednesday 8.30pm slot is a good slot for any comedy, because they're not starting at a natural junction with any other channel. I think the BBC would be better off putting 'filler' in that 8.30pm slot (the sort of stuff they were showing at 7.30pm before like The Boat That Was Built), and have the pre-watershed comedies in the 7.30pm Wednesday slot during the Waterloo Road off-season. If Life of Riley can manage 4.5m+ in that 7.30pm slot like it managed last year and a crappy docusoap like Poms in Paradise is getting almost 4m, I bet any solid mainstream scripted show in that slot would be rating well.


Where does the 80% figure come from? This year, ITV has launched 7 new drama series - 4 of which have been crime dramas (Vera, Case Sensitive, Kidnap & Ransom, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher), 3 of them have been non-crime (Monroe, Marchlands, The Reckoning). That's pretty even. In terms of number of hours of new drama, there's actually been more new non-crime drama on ITV1 so far this year (14 hours vs 13). And in terms of dramas overall, there's been 46 hours of crime compared to 36 hours of non-crime thus far in 2011, a split of 56/44% - no where near the 80% you claim.

It's been a relatively strong start to the year for the ITV drama department because none of those shows have done badly. Their lowest rated new drama has been The Reckoning and even that managed a 5.2m consolidated average, which is respectable. 5 of them have been solid hits, averaging about 6m or more (4 of them already recommissioned). And even Monroe, which had modest ratings, managed a 5.5m average making it the 4th most watched new 6-part weeknight drama series on either ITV1 or BBC1 in four years (about 30 of these dramas have launched in that period so that's very high up the list). In any other year, it'd have been recommissioned but as it's been an unusually strong batch of dramas so far this year with a high renewal rate, a show like Monroe might be squeezed out from getting another series due to the limited pot of money being invested in the higher rated ones. Ironically, ITV's most popular drama series in their schedules are non-crime, with Wild at Heart, Downton Abbey and Doc Martin being their big hitters, and even this year their biggest new drama series hit has been Marchlands - a ghost/relationship drama.

So IMO the 'ITV is showing too much crime drama' argument is being exaggerated. A 56/44 split is not a big difference - I suppose the BBC's split will skew more favourably to non-crime drama, but they have more freedom to do that as they're not under commercial pressures. In terms of comparing ITV to most commercial broadcasters from other countries, their ratio of crime to non crime is not any worse. And all they're doing is playing to their strengths - nearly everytime they've veered out of non-crime territory in recent years especially 'quirky' dramas, the audiences haven't been there, so it makes sense going back to their tried and tested formula although as I've said above, they've complemented them with some non-crime shows so far this year too. Crime drama doesn't = instant hit anyway - just look at Identity and Luther from last year's new batch of dramas, neither of which set the ratings alight.

Waterloo Road did well with over 5 million viewers. I actually thought that there were 11.40 million viewers watching Christmas Day EastEnders on the original screening. 9.9 million viewers is brilliant, though.

Broadcast described the rating as "poor." I know it was a final, but I still think it did alright considering it was an all-foreign tie and it wasn't exactly a classic with 1 goal settling it. It peaked at 1.7m / 8.1% at 8pm which seems pretty good to me.

Do they have the rights to next year's Europa League or not? I sure hope so! The coverage has been, once again, excellent.

There was, 9.91m watched live, 1.49m watched later that day but before 2am = 11.4m. All same day viewing is included in the overnight rating.

I believe they have one more year left in the contract which I'm sure they'll renew at slightly more than what they paid before.

Yes, the existing EL contracts have one more season to go.

Tender for 2012/13 to 2014/15 not yet issued.

Great stuff D.M.N. When are we going to start live, same day and then consolidated on here?!

I like this bit here


In commercial TV's case it's so the adverts are missed.

It seems I'm not alone then. Apart from a bit of news, all my viewing is timeshifted. Even live sport like the golf on Sky, I start watching fifteen minutes per hour of broadcast,after it's started to cut the commercials.

Tonight's viewing is Sunday's Vera, and last night's Sopranos and Fringe. Four hours ten minutes of linear TV in just over three!!

Plucked from the air methinks.

Thank god for the likes of rzt who can actually back up his posts with cold hard facts instead of mere hyperbole!

Thanks for the info gents.

BBC expecting 8 million viewers for tonight's Question Time:

Ken Clarke
@lawteacher1 BBC stitched me up, They are hoping that the ratings on #bbcqt tonight will be even higher than when they had Nick Griffin
11 minutes ago via web

Doubt it, myself.

I dont think the BBC did stitch him up, cleary he seriously mispoke, and I didnt see other parts of the press, taking a differnt stance.

how come the BBC Press website has Lead Ballon episode 2 on Monday week 23, when it was on Tuesday Week 22?

From the world of Facebook...
Mock The Week will be back on BBC Two on Thursday evenings for its tenth series, starting on June 9th. If you want to hear more about the preparations, you can 'like' the creator and producer of the show, Dan Patterson, and get updates from him on Facebook directly.

cool, look foward to it, but I hope its better than last season

How come people on this thread are so desperate to defend Life Of Reilly? It's flopped because it's been badly scheduled? NO!!!! It's flopped because it's total rubbish. A load of unfunny characters spouting a load of unfunny dialogue. It should have been drowned at birth.

You seriously think that if Outnumbered or Miranda was in this slot they'd be getting under 3m viewers when the programme before has 5m and the one after it has 7m? Of course they wouldn't.

I took it as just a figurative number which was making the point ITV seemingly relied on very heavily on crime drana. which I think is a fair ascertation.


They arent expecting 8m. Im not sure why you have posted this.


I agree that it is an awfully unfunny show but I cant imagine the quality has dipped from last series (it couldnt get any lower) but ratings have halved. That must be down to the slot.