The Ratings Prediction Game is about to kick off its 15th season. And every Ratings Thread reader is welcome to play! As usual, all scores will be reset so everyone starts off on a level playing field. I'd love to get some more of you lot on board!

Week 1 shows include... new runs of New Tricks and Law & Order: UK, the U.S. version of The Killing, royal documentary Kate in Canada, the show that's gripped the nation this summer The Apprentice, a special hour-long EastEnders, much hyped reality series Candy Bar Girls and the sporting event of the week the F1 British Grand Prix.

Click here for the full schedule and to submit your predictions. Thanks for reading and hope to see you there!

Deadline for predictions: 9:30am Tuesday.

Maybe they should bring back The Bill

Or at least some sort of police based weekly drama/soap with a similar format.

Cast some sort of ex-EE, ED or CS actors as the leads and I'm sure it would be a hit, without all the 'The Bill' baggage that the old The Bill had with it.

In general, ITV1 has improved from the early 2000s but they still have too many weaknesses for a leading commercial channel.

My favourite ITV channel is ITV4. The first few years of the channel were dire but over time its content has improved significantly and it's now the closest we are going to get to a FTA sports channel in the UK. Good to see they increased their Tour De France coverage this year for the second year in a row. (an extra half an hour of live coverage per day)

Who knows what they were thinking. It's a show which flopped in America and was ridiculed by critics. They even did a pilot which must've showed this was a weak format, and they still decided to go ahead with the series after that :sleep:! Surprising to think that the current ITV light entertainment commissioner Elaine Bedell was reportedly responsible for commissioning shows including Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, Strictly Come Dancing, Have I Got News For You? and Top Gear at the Beeb. Her track record at ITV with new shows in recent years has been very poor.

Penn & Teller, to be fair to her, has been a good commission quality-wise but it just hasn't done the business ratings-wise (in particular last night, if what the tweeter said is true). A bit surprising as the comments generally for it have been very positive and has had good AIs, but clearly something isn't working as it's shed viewers a couple of weeks in a row now, in contrast to The Magicians earlier this year which had poor reviews but still gripped viewers enough to keep coming back every week in the 5.0-5.5m range!

In It To Win It is tough opposition. I'm tempted to say ITV should move Marriage Ref and Odd One In into post news slots, air Penn and Teller opposite Tonight the Night and broadcast the Harry Potter films after it as filler.

Good advertisement.

I wasn't going to play this week but you talked me round. And the list of programmes all copied out on an "Add Reply" box for us. Excellent.

Glad you didn't include The Marriage Ref in the list of shows. The numbers on my lap-top don't go that low.

I was convinced The Marriage Ref would flop when I first heard about it. Seems the Great British Public thought the same, cos it's not really the case that people have switched it off. They never switched it on in the first place. Everyone knew it was a rubbish idea apart from the ITV commissioning editors.

ITV4 has improved but I think it's lacking compared to ITV2 and ITV3. I'm surprised ITV dont acquire more newer US imports rather than stuff like The Sweeney.

Very fair comment.

Yeah, In It To Win It is a popular show, the BBC's most popular National Lottery format, but I think there is enough of an anti-audience there for P&T to have been able to get 4m. I do think the first couple of episodes of P&T rated fine but something which sounds like 3.0-3.3m last night isn't great because it would've meant it's shed about 1m in a couple of weeks.

I think Odd One In has done okay so far, shares of 18% it's been getting is decent, if a little under the ideal 20% mark. There ought to be a big enough audience out there for Penn & Teller to grab to do better. I'd leave it at 8pm for now and just see if it can do any better in the next couple of weeks. As for The Marriage Ref, I thought 2.5m was just about cutting it close to axe levels, but if it really has dipped under 2m last night they should just relegate that to 11pm and have a Foyle's War repeat between 9-11pm which would perform at least 1.0m better.

I think what the ITV Saturday schedule has lacked was a reliable returning show. To be honest, I think even something as clapped out as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire would've brought a bit of stability to that lineup and helped out other shows around it a little.

I agree. I suppose ITV'd argue both Odd One In and Penn & Teller were returning shows - in a sense - but neither were established enough to prop up the schedule.

Perhaps Elaine hates ITV every bit as much as RobbieSykes and is working to destroy the company from within.

As for Penn and Teller - Kevin O'Sullivan, TV critic in the Sunday Mirror, is singularly unimpressed.

Of ITV's weekend shows he writes:

and then:

The Magicians got its audience cos it was on in the winter against Primeval (which wouldn't appeal much to the light-entertanment watching Saturday night audience).

good for the tennis, EE and C5
i can see C5 beating C4 more regularly especially when CBB starts

emmerdale was dented but it'll do worse on thurs against EE(hour-long)
good job the king of was shortened, can't understand why POG is tanking, must be the guests but it really is a daytime show

He also happens to be a complete idiot though (nothing to do with his views on P&T or any individual programme though).

I agree with rzt that ITV would really have benefited from an established show in the schedules to prop it up. Even moving YBF to a later slot would probably help, and Best of TV Burp would get a consistent 4m. The Marriage Ref needs to be moved as it sounds like it's gone even lower than Magic Numbers did last year. The other 2 are OK where they are but I think they should insert something like YBF/TV Burp in at 8pm with P&T at 8:30pm. Neither show is established enough to anchor the schedule so putting them on back to back was a bad decision. I notice they're showing Millionaire Live in a few weeks - I don't see why they couldn't have commissioned 8 weeks of that for the 8pm slot with Odd One In at 7pm and P&T at 9pm. They'd have done a lot better with that sort of schedule.

I hope P&T didn't dip too far last night. I think if it can keep above 3.5m it's done OK for a Summer show out on its own in the schedule and deserves a shot elsewhere (perhaps alongside BGT next Spring). Odd One In is the sort of show that can return in the 7pm slot every Summer and do alright-ish numbers with a very low price tag. I'm surprised they haven't done a full repeat run of the Potter movies in the run up to the new one being released, although I suspect one will pop up on the 16th/17th. They should have ran them at teatime on Saturdays as they always bring in decent numbers.

As for the Beyonce special mentioned upthread, I think it's going to go on Saturday 10th December as the JLS special last year was going to air after the 'semi final' and aired on the 11th. I suspect the Beyonce show will go at 9pm not 6pm though as she'll do a rather better job of getting ratings than JLS did last year (won't be difficult!). Interesting to see they're already planning their big weekend though, I hope the post-X Factor slot on the Sunday goes to something more deserving than Life Stories this year.

The thing about Penn & Teller is that the acts are in general not very good, increasingly they are a bit cringey.

The pilot and the 1st episode were fine but since then it's dipped rather quickly.

even in this multi channel age, it really is dire that only one show scraped above 4million on a saturday night on bbc1 or itv.

the schedules are appalling.

I might not be ITV plc's greatest fan, but "hate"?

I'm more even-handed than a few on this thread!

Media guardian's dodgy reporting.
She didn't commission them she oversaw them like she now does X Factor/BGT/DOI etc. Her job at the BBC was Entertainment controller responsible for maintaing existing shows and commissioning new ones.

Her track record at commissioning Entertainment for the BBC was pretty awful
Eurovision-your country needs you.
Last Choir Standing
Eurovision Dance Contest
The National Lottery: This Time Tomorrow
Commercial Breakdown With Jimmy Carr
The Kids Are All Right
The One and Only [the awful stars in their eyes rip off]
Dance x:yawn:

But the worst commission of all was when her and Peter Fincham decided to make commission Castaway 2007 [Which wasn't even a hit first time around.]
It was dropped from its original slots within weeks and cut into 30minute shows airing in the one show slot. Must have been the most expensive 7pm show the BBC ever had considering the show cost £12m.

The only hits she had were Total Wipeout and Hole in the wall. She should stick to water based shows

Strictly was before her time. Jane Lush commissioned it, Dragons Den and The Apprentice.Friday Night with Jr and HIGNFY were also commissioned a long long time before her arrival.
Lets Dance for Comic Relief iirc was commissioned by her replacement.

She was better as head of Factual [which she held before the Entertainment job] to be fair,
She commissioned Mary Queen Of Shops, the celebrity spin off of Masterchef , street doctor and worked on the launch of The One show. I think she was a producer on Top Gear at one stage also.

Casualty presumably drew in over 4m too so that makes it two shows.

I'm sure the repeat of Walk on the wild side was pushing 9m

Ah, thanks for that. I was going off what Media Guardian said - obviously they were wrong! Looks like she's got a terrible track record at both broadcasters then, with Total Wipeout being the only proper light entertainment success she's commissioned and that was just really buying a format rather than getting involved in terms of developing a brand-new show.

At ITV, the only one you can say she's commissioned and been moderately successful is Take Me Out, maybe The Cube at a push if you ignore the fact it doesn't hold up so well without TXF airing next to it .

Although a lot of people criticise the BBC for "not being able to do light entertainment" well, to be fair to them, in the last three years they have had more successes in the genre than ITV. Shows like Comedy Roadshow, Tonight's The Night, The Magicians, John Bishop's Britain have come through and rated well for them. Okay sure, the middle two didn't exactly have good reviews and none of them are big-hitters, but they still managed very respectable 21/23% shares. In that same time ITV have only really had proper success with TMO in terms of new shows which can hold up on their own irrespective of big lead-ins/outs. Maybe they need some new commissioners there who have the vision and expertise at commissioning better ideas and programmes because the recent ITV track record with light entertainment programmes is poor: 1 or 2 successes out of about maybe a dozen new shows they've had in the last few years, simply not good enough.

BBC HD had both Family Guy episodes scheduled on the EPG tonight.

announcer at end of first Family Guy

'due to our ongoing coverage of Wimbledon we can't bring you the next episode of Family Guy so please switch over to BBC3'

Wtf?!

You PAY for one HD screening then don't screen it for a repeat of Wimbledon?!

There's some great joined up thinking

I think you're under-estimating it - I'd go with 12m at least.

Totally agree. It's such a tough genre and you can see why both the BBC and ITV went all out to get the rights to 'The Voice'.

BBC Entertainment really suffered after Strictly mainly because all those involved with it either set up their own production companies or moved to America to work for BBC Worldwide on Dancing with the stars.
I think some of the names to look for in the future will be Moira Ross [Exec producer of SCD and who revived the show last year] and Beth Hart [who will be Showrunner on the next series of X factor after doing a great job on the last series of I'm a celebrity]. Both the BBC and ITV need fresh blood imo.

Did C4 ever film the announced Claudia Winkleman daytime talent show which was a blatant rip-off of the one Brian Conley did on BBC2?


To be fair C4 have long had periods where they've shown films pre-watershed on a Sunday too - just not all year round like it seems to be for C5. I think at the moment though it's picking up the viewers from BBC1/ITV1 rather than C5.

And seems like at last C4 have realised they need more than Shameless in their returning drama cupboard. Along with Siren last week they've got campus based comedy drama Fresh Meat in the autumn, intended as a returning series (and hopefully more successful than their last Campus based project!), plus an adaptation of Nick Hornby's Slam - about a teenage boy who gets a girl pregnant, and Top Boy, about East London gang life. They're also looking for a drama for "older children".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011...milla-campbell




I guess the sport ticks the "new" box for ITV4 though, and as Dancc say it's the closest we're getting to a free sports channel now, and like the rebrand One in Australia it benefits from being able to switch to other genres to fill the many hours where there isn't the live sports content.