It seems overkill to have 3 chat shows between 9.00 and 11.20. Lady Gaga will have alienated the core POG viewers. I watched Chatty Man and aside from his excitable nature he can get decent guests. Graham Norton fawning as ever but again the guests really enjoy the show. I would have preferred 9.00 POG, 10.00 CM, 11.00 GN to avoid any crossover. Does anyone have the Graham Norton rating?

The soaps were ok for a Friday, I noticed the BBC3 EE figure way down on midweek - shows how many regular viewers are out on a Friday night. Impressive for The Kennedys, was shown on cable to less fanfare but ought timeshift to 3m easily for BBC2, maybe it seems more of a Sunday night show - but well done anyway.

Robert Lindsay was saying on TOS that himself and Zoe Wannamaker knew the show had reached a natural end - of course it still beat Miranda by 0.5m so not so good for the latter. Miranda is true BBC2 comedy. BBC1 could do with a Michael McIntyre sit com similar to Seinfeld - I think it would do incredibly well with the right supporting cast.

BBC1 getting The Voice is a fascinating development. I had expected ITV to nab it as they'll have offered more money and could have exploited more revenue platforms. However, the BBC does have a strong reputation and that probably swung it. I really like what Cohen is doing with BBC1 and this is another great move. They're paying £10-12.5m (depending on the report) per series so they're not doing it on the cheap. I think it could do really well. I know BBC1's track record with talent shows isn't great but this is going to be an indie production and they're actually putting some money into it.

As for the coaches, getting Cheryl Cole or Dannii Minogue would totally defeat the point of the show as it's about credible musicians, and neither of them are. George Michael, Robbie Williams and Adele are clearly the favourites just now. If they get those 3 then the fourth would probably be someone with a slightly lower profile. I saw Will Young mentioned on here and he could round out the panel nicely. As for hosts, Chris Evans and Fearne Cotton actually seems like a pretty likely combination. I'd like to see Davina do a big show like this though. Perhaps they could pair her with a younger, Radio 1 co-host (Reggie Yates?).

So with a strong panel like that and good hosts the only other thing they need to nail is scheduling. Firstly they need to do a decent amount of audition shows as that's where the main gimmick lies. I'd go for 5 audition shows, starting on New Year's Day before running for 4 Saturdays from the 7th-28th January. I think they need to have the final on 10th March as the final of the Six Nations is on the 17th. That therefore leaves them 6 weeks. They don't need 4 weeks for the battle rounds, they can do them in 2, but with 75-90 minute shows. That leaves them with 4 weeks for the live shows, which is the same as the US. So, to summarise:

New Year's Day: Auditions 1
7th-28th January: Auditions 2-5
4th-11th February: Battle Rounds
18th-25th February: Top 16 shows
3rd March: Top 8
10th March: Final

Plenty of promotion over Christmas will be essential too. I think a brilliant move would be to get the coaches to do a performance together like they did in the US and show it on Christmas Day between 2 big primetime shows to get some real exposure. Perhaps make it into a proper 5 minute preview. This is BBC1's biggest entertainment commission in years and they need to make it work.

If The X Factor Final is on 10th/11th December, then another idea could be to launch it in a Strictly Final sandwich on the 17th, with episode 2 after Sport Personality the following night at 9pm. Episode 3 on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day with episode 4 on New Year's Day before continuing on Saturdays. It could do huge numbers, but the risk is that it could get lost over Xmas. Perhaps they could just show one episode on the 17th/18th before launching it properly on NYD.

Why was it good? I can't be doing with 'comedy panel shows' and for that matter 'chat shows'. Never watch them.

US Open for me last night, with Raising Hope, Castle, Dexter, and In Treatment on the Sky+.

I'm not suggesting the BBC should only show minority programmes as they do have an excellent history in entertainment, but might this be seen as yet another singing contest and judging by the poor response to SYTYCD, if this flops, then the BBC will need to try something else.

I think The X Factor final will be on the weekend of 17/18 December to try and maximise the advertising revenue. The risk of BBC1 placing The Voice inbetween Strictly Come Dancing over that weekend will just increase the probability of The X Factor being aired then. Of course, the BBC can just air The Voice on Christmas Day instead of Strictly Come Dancing in an EastEnders sandwich. The risk would be is that it'd be against Coronation Street, but that's a shadow of its usual self on Christmas Day.

I do agree with some concern about BBC splashing out money on entertainment formats and possibly losing sports rights or not spending more on drama and comedy in the process. Commercial channels offer enough variation on light entertainment shows without the BBC spending millions of pounds on another one.

The Kennedy's did superbly last night. Paul O'Grady saw so boost whatsoever with Lady Gaga appearing which is a slight shame as it was an entertaining and interesting show. My Family always performs better before the watershed but it's understandable why they're sacrificing it as it's the final series. Miranda did well for a repeat. The soaps performed reasonably well, though the share for the second Coronation Street seems a little low -I expected it to be more around 40%. Channel 5 had a good night with Castle starting off with a good figure while Channel 4 will be pleased with 8 out of 10 Cats and Chatty Man...but perhaps not so happy with King Of.

I doubt The Voice will make its debut this year, after all the press release does specifically say "will make its UK debut on the channel next year".

That is the major difference, a dance show is never going to draw in a massive audience, whereas The Voice has interactive judges, a totally new format, no ad breaks every act like on ITV. it won't be shown against BGT or TXF and if they get the production values right the viewers will flock to it. The cost of tv these days is immense and so it needs viewers to tune in by the million - I can see it being a huge success by BBC standards - 8 million overnight viewers.

ouyuj

The Voice would be ideal at 8.00pm in Jan & Feb - lottery at 7.45, The Voice at 8pm until 9.00 running weekly. The slot was taken by 'In It To Win It' this past January and timeshifted to over 6m every week.

The Voice would basically have a free run airing against a 2010/11 Q1-style ITV1 schedule. It'd have such a good chance of becoming a hit airing from January next year, the BBC will be mad not to launch it then. Like I said yesterday, if The Magicians and SYTYCD, two pretty average shows to say the least, can manage audiences of c.5.5m at that time of the year, unless the The Voice is absolutely terrible (which is unlikely given the money the BBC are reportedly spending on it), it'll surely be getting 6m+, at least initially, against very average competition. Take Me Out is not a big "hitter" as Brekkie puts it - it does very well with the 16-34s but it doesn't appeal to all age groups, a big-hitter is something which gets 7m+ not 4.5-5.0m.

Unless Red or Black becomes a big hit, which I agree with C14E doesn't look too likely (it could be a middling hit), really I don't see any better alternative than to move the Dancing on Ice performance show to Saturdays. Saturdays in Q1 is screaming out for a talent show and it's something which I've suggested they should've done previously anyway. But it's even more important for them now because unless ITV wants to hand the BBC a big hit on the plate which could potentially be a staple for them in the next 5-10 years, surely ITV will have to be aggressive to counteract the Voice becoming a big success? Whilst I agree with both Brekkie and C14E that there's no guarantee that DOI can cope with a Sat/Sun split as well as the current Sun scheduling, the signs are there that the show has a pretty loyal audience: it was averaging 8m+ earlier this year against tough competition like Antiques Roadshow and Top Gear (both 6m at the same time) in the 8-8.30pm half-hour period, so I suspect it'd be able to cope absolutely fine against an untested show like The Voice and potentially prevent it from becoming a breakout hit (there'd still be enough of an audience around for The Voice to be a normal hit though but not a 'big-hitter' I suspect).

So if ITV want to prevent The Voice from becoming a massive success and also in the process raise their own primetime shares for Sat/Sun primetime overall, I'd suggest a schedule of:

Sat: 19:00- TV Burp, 19:30- Dancing on Ice, 21:00- Take Me Out
Sun: 19:00- Dancing on Ice Results, 20:00- Wild at Heart, 21:00- Whitechapel/Scott & Bailey/New Drama

TV Burp would be capable of its usual 5.0-5.5m helped by DOI viewers tuning in early - it only really dropped to 4.0-4.5m earlier this year for 4 episodes against Let's Dance, a clash that might not even happen next year. DOI would need some big names next year if they go with the Sat/Sun schedule and ITV just need to make a bigger deal about it with better promotion and make it a top priority really, but a 7.30-9pm slot on a Saturday would surely see its figures pretty similar to how the 6.30-8.30pm Sunday performance shows have rated previously and I wouldn't envisage a significant ratings drop. TMO would be a bit later than its ideal time but it showed earlier this year that it was capable of good ratings running into the 9pm (and even 10pm) slot and should be capable of a solid 5m with the big lead-in it'd get. As for the Sunday schedule, you could switch DOI/WAH over if you wanted - the only reason I've done it that way is that DOI seems to do really well in the 7pm hour, like SCD, so I think having it there it'd done fine (better than the ~7m the results shows were getting at 9.30pm) and still provide that big lead-in to WaH. WaH probably wouldn't rate as well as it used to (~7m) due to starting at the hour instead of half-hour but ought to be capable 6-7m, which would be a good inheritence for a 9pm drama to rate at 5m+. Overall it'd mean Sundays rating worse than how they have done in the last three years, for sure, but there would be a huge uplift in the Saturday share (the first 10 weeks this year only averaged 15.6% on Saturday primetime for ITV1!) and DOI would actually probably be longer in its duration with the Sat/Sun split scheduling due to the 60-min instead of 30-min results, meaning more adverts during it for ITV. If ITV don't do anything and just have their usual lineup of 18.30 You've Been Framed, 19.00 TV Burp, 19.30 Take Me Out, 20.45 Jonathan Ross's Show, which is a realistic possibility, they're going to get absolutely thrashed and I think The Voice would clean up in the ratings: not TXF/BGT levels obviously but a big hit by usual BBC1 light entertainment standards.

I know some people are saying The Voice could go the same way as SYTYCD has done over here but I'd disagree. In the US, The Voice gets double the ratings SYTYCD has been getting. SYTYCD itself is an average hit over there IMO - it does pretty well in the demo but not great among total viewers, it was even almost beaten by a Wipeout repeat recently. So I never thought the Beeb had a big hit on their hands with SYTYCD, although they should've done better with it. With The Voice though, they're pouring a lot of money into it (reportedly £650k an hour) so you'll be able to tell on-screen, the newspapers are actually talking about it unlike SYTYCD which is very important for talent shows, and the concept of the show has been popular worldwide, so I can see it doing very well.

I'm sympathetic to where you're coming from. But the big question is what else?

I think its a bit of a myth that broadcasters have been sticking religiously to the talent show genre - we only feel its dominant because these shows are basically the only ones really working (and hence, the only ones returning).

In just the past few years on British TV, we've had: Totally Saturday, Tonight's the Night, The Magicians, Sing if You Can, Beat the Star, Magic Numbers, Push the Button. etc. (And I wouldn't bet against them being joined by All Star Cast and a few others soon...) And none of them have turned into any sort of hit. In fact, most of them have fallen on their backsides. The Voice is a bit of a by-the-numbers way of getting the BBC back into the big entertainment game - but I don't really see what other compelling options they have.

True, I still think a New Year's Day launch is most likely.

Also, I remember reading that The X Factor will launch on 20th August this year, which is the same weekend as last year, so if it does end on 17th/18th December then it'll need to have an extra week. That's a possibility, especially if they have 16 contestants again, but I don't see why they'd want to have it that weekend and let it clash with the Strictly Final on the Saturday and Sport Personality on the 18th (I think SPOTY possibly dented it a bit in 2009). The weekend before they have a free run.

On another note, in their article about Paul O'Grady hosting Strictly The Daily Mail say that ITV don't have a series of POG Live planned for this Autumn. A bit surprising if true but I guess with this run going on until July 8 then September would be a bit soon for it to return, particularly as they only have 8-9 weeks this Autumn before IAC. I suspect it'll be back with a longer run in January instead (with an Xmas special beforehand). That leaves them with a hole in their Friday schedules this Autumn. I think Piers Morgan's Life Stories may be moving to Fridays this Autumn as Jonathan Ross has confirmed that he's going on Saturdays and Piers is on contract to do a series this Autumn so I think he'll get Fridays this Autumn with O'Grady in January. I think he could do OK there and I'm glad they're not wasting TXF lead in on Life Stories again.

I was just loking on barb at ratings for W/E 17th June 2001 - to see how BBC1 & ITV1 were holding up exactly 10 years ago.

BBC1
1 EASTENDERS (THU/SUN) 16.67
2 EASTENDERS (TUE/SUN) 15.38
3 EASTENDERS (MON/SUN) 15.12
4 MY HERO (MON/SUN) 8.54
5 KISS THE GIRLS (SAT 2103) 7.56
6 NEIGHBOURS (MON 1345/1736) 7.11
7 NEIGHBOURS (THU 1345/1737) 7.06
8 NEIGHBOURS (TUE 1345/1737) 6.81
8 NEIGHBOURS (FRI 1345/1736) 6.81
10 ONLY FOOLS & HORSES (FRI 2005) 6.75

ITV1
1 CORONATION STREET (SUN 1929) 14.24
1 CORONATION STREET (MON/WED) 14.24
3 CORONATION STREET (WED/FRI) 14.01
4 CORONATION STREET (FRI 1933) 13.81
5 CORONATION STREET (TUE/THU) 13.23
6 CORONATION STREET (THU 2002) 13.10
7 EMMERDALE (FRI 1903) 10.34
8 EMMERDALE (WED 1901) 9.91
9 EMMERDALE (MON 1900) 9.88
9 EMMERDALE (THU 1902) 9.88

The combined soap ratings do skew the figures somewhat, but it does show how they dominated the ratings almost totally.

Gosh look how popular neighbours was back in the day. Even in the last 10 years Ratings have fallen so far.

Not sure that's the wisest of decisions from ITV. I would have tried to push it back to September with Saturday/Sunday split for the entire series.

I know its always launched in mid August, or at least for the past couple of years, but I think a 'bad launch' will stick out more with no Simon or Cheryl, plus a few Sunday audition shows could draw the audience back in. (although I'm not sure what they have planned for Sundays so that may not be possible)


A better comparison would be same Friday, 8 years ago:

Friday 20th June 2003
BBC One
19:00 - A Question of Sport: 4.98m
19:30 - below 4.19m
20:00 - EastEnders: 10.33m
20:30 - My Family: 5.66m

ITV1
19:00 - Play Your Cards Right: 5.06m
19:30 - Coronation Street: 10.98m
20:00 - below 3.43m
20:30 - A Touch of Frost: 6.44m
22:30 - ITV Weekend News: 4.15m

Channel 4
20:30 - Big Brother: 4.30m
21:00 - Will & Grace: 3.37m
21:30 - Scrubs: 2.97m
22:00 - Big Brother: 5.15m
22:35 - V Graham Norton: 3.38m
23:15 - Big Brother: 4.54m

Even then there was variety (no doubt helped by Channel 4....) and something for everyone, the drama, the comedy, the early evening quiz show and the reality TV.

When did the Friday night Emmerdale start?

I'd be a bit surprised if they don't have PoG in the Autumn, at least they know he guarantees them ~3.5m in that Friday slot. Not great but they've seen far worse in that slot before. I think Life Stories would do even worse to be honest: the show was getting 4m with a BGT lead-in and generally 4.5m with a TXF lead-in excluding the hugely inflated Cheryl Cole/Susan Boyle episodes, so if you take away the 25-30% boosts TXF/BGT generally give to programmes airing after them, Life Stories could be rating at just 3m in that Friday 9pm slot. I think they're better off just moving the show to Sunday at 10pm where it originally started where there's less pressure on it to get relatively big figures but it'd still outperform the slot average comfortably, and they could always have special editions with the really big guests on Saturdays as well if they wanted to. I don't really see it as a 9pm programming, but then again I suppose you could say the same thing against Paul O'Grady.

Apparently in 2000, that probably was a one off or something.

Well, thanks to RZT breakdown, we know Scottish Holby is a real killer and drags anything down. It pulls a measly 8% share in Scotland which would translate to about 1.8m if networked across BBC1. That is what lead me to say My Family would have had 200k knocked off. (Unless your suggesting My Family rates very low in Scotland also, which is possible I guess.)

Friday nights are always going to have a maximum numbers of viewers especially in June. BBC1 sitcoms seem to be settling at 4m, I know ITV1 don't do comedy really these days. The soaps will always have core viewers and I am sure a lot of people would watch EE at 730 before heading out for the night.

I would like to see a variety show on BBC1 - a decent stand up, a dance magic/act, a couple of music acts maybe with a chat element. I realised I just described something like POG but less annoying POG stunts and more mainstream talent.

Seems Graham Norton is around about the same.

They ditched Emmerdale for Play Your Cards Right on an odd night in June? Very strange!

Just checked Wikipedia again, and it looks like there were 4 episodes broadcast on Friday's for some reason. The Friday episode returned when the 4 episodes ended.

Edit: Or not, only one was broadcast on Fridays. I'm sure someone here will know why it was on then.

Maybe it was experiment because Emmerdale wasn't rating as high on Friday nights as other nights?

What does everyone on hear think on how the big 3 Reality shows will do this year.

I Think X Factor Will average 12-13m
Strictly Come Dancing: 10m
I'm A Celebrity: 9.5m


Also when is Doctor Who Coming back?