Yeah but say if the boxing only got 500k last night (okay, highly unlikely) then Channel 5 may not touch it in future, but if it got 1.5m, it may mean an increase of terrestrial boxing in the future.

Oh, happy days.

Does anyone else think Steve Williams should write a book about TV ratings / history?

I'd buy it.

Yep!

I concur, ITV1 had moved so far downmarket by the end of the Shaps/ Allen era it made Channel 5 look like BBC Four. The summer schedule for 2006 must have been the worst ever: Celebrity Love Island returned with the new name of Love Island, which fooled nobody, and had viewers reaching for their remotes for five weeks, then there was pointless filler like the Coronation St Family Album and on one occasion they showed the same film twice on one night. I do believe ratings nearly fell below 10 pc as apart from the most fanatical soap and reality show fans, no one else could stomach a schedule that must have been dreamt up by the editor of HEAT magazine.
Sadly for all ITV1 has improved considerably since then, many viewers still think it is dominated by reality shows and soaps and have never switched back.

One more rating from last night:

Tonight's The Night: 3.7m (19.8%)
* started at 3.1m and grew to 4.3m

Source: Gavin Barker

Acceptable for this time of year and the share is good.

Saturday 23rd July Overnights
BBC One
19:10- Tonight's The Night: 3.7m (19.8%)
20:10- The National Lottery: In It To Win It: 5.51m (27.4%)
21:00- Casualty: 5.07m (24.2%)
21:50- Lee Mack's All Star Cast: 3.05m (15.6%)

BBC Two
19:30- Dad's Army: 1.73m (9.3%)
20:00- The Impressionists: Paintings and Revolution: 988k (4.9%)
21:00- BBC Proms 2011: 659k (3.3%)

ITV1
17:20- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: 3.57m (21.5%) , +1: 512k
20:15- Odd One In: 2.81m (13.8%) , +1: 229k
21:00- Penn and Teller: Fool Us: 3.28m (16%)
22:00- The Marriage Ref: 1.4m (7.8%)

Channel 4
19:30- The Space Shuttle's Last Flight: 1.14m (5.7%) , +1: 177k
21:00- Camelot: 917k (4.5%)

Channel 5
20:00- NCIS: 929k (4.6%)
21:00- Law & Order: SVU: 1.1m (5.3%)
22:00- Boxing Live: British Heavyweight Title Fight: 2.26m (13%)
* 15-minute peak: 2.9m (19.7%) at 11pm
* most watched programme in timeslot

Primetime Shares
BBC One: 21.7%
ITV1: 15.8% (+1: 2.2%)
Channel 5: 6.4%
BBC Two: 5.3%
Channel 4: 4.7% (+1: 0.7%)

Ratings are tape-checked and include HD

Source: DS

That is a great rating for the Boxing

Super rating that for Channel 5 between two 'unknowns' it has to be said, or at least neither are massive names. Seems that risk paid off beautifully for them. As expected for BBC1, Penn and Teller did okay while the Harry Potter film brought in a very solid share.

Excellent for the boxing indeed. Channel 5 will be thrilled with that performance I should think.

S.V.U. took a dive against Casualty, but it was still comfortably ahead of it's Channel 4 rival Camelot in the head-to-head.

Fool Us bounced back a bit for ITV1, and that's a decent rating for the Harry Potter movie in the early evening period. Good night for BBC One as usual on a Saturday.

Chuffed for Channel 5 and their boxing rating.
They got the programme absolutely right with experience all through the ranks with presenter Mark Pougatch (Radio 5Live Sport), Jim Rosenthal (numerous sports events over the year) and highly competent commentators in Dave Ferrar and Al Bernstein.
Helps of course that it was an entertaining fight too, and hopefully this will encourage Five to stick with a winning formula.

The Boxing ratings are very good, hopefully it'll encourage Channel 5 to invest in more boxing, given that Saturday BB never rates anyway, I could see them dropping Saturdays in favour of boxing on occassions.

According to an interview on BBC News website, Channel 5 has got Tyson Fury's next fight. So that's a great coup for them given how well last night's fight rated!

Good stuff. What's the date, do you know?

No date announced yet.

The article here suggests 6/7 of his fights will be on terrestrial.

Another good result for the lottery. Possibly a little bit of mutual denting with Casualty and Law & Order. The boxing rated well, and look at its peak share!

And with our smileys, I can tell the story of a low blow:

Well, maybe one day. In other news, copies still available!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/ENCYCLOPEDIA...ef=pd_sxp_f_pt


Penn and Teller did okay apart from it being beaten by ratings thread punchbag Tonight's The Night. The boxing rating is incredible, although boxing is a tough sport to make a success of because you never really know what you're going to get, you only have to look at Audley Harrison on the Beeb for that. And the promoters are only interested in PPV, by the sounds of things.

In fact since ITV lost all the big fights to Sky in the mid-nineties there's been a few attempts to bring boxing back to terrestrial, ITV had a go in the late nineties with Shea "The Shamrock Express" Nearey, but he never quite made it, although it did involve showing a fight where the ring collapsed halfway through. Then there was the Beeb with Audley Harrison and the early David Haye fights a decade ago, then ITV's stuff a few years ago.

Channel 5 should try and avoid a clash with X Factor but I could see this schedule with both Big Brother and Boxing.

8pm NCIS
9pm Big Brother
10pm Boxing

Would rate quite well and give them a good share.

Not everyday you see ratings like that for Channel 5.

Does anyone know how well Breakfast did yesterday in light of the Norway attacks?

Yeah, the next fight is likely to be in the Autumn - November/early December - so that would be quite a likely lineup. The boxing would be best kept away from TXF, which it should be if scheduled at 10pm once again. That schedule half an hour later would be even better IMO as BB then would probably avoid TXF (or most of it anyway) too.

PJ, if you're reading - do you know how the F1 did yesterday from 12:10 to 2:20 on BBC1? Ta. I suspect the race did well today with a Brit winning.

Thanks mate.

It seems his promoter is hoping to get him onto PPV fights eventually so Channel 5 should enjoy it whilst it lasts!

Expectations for the fight by the way were much lower at 1.5-2.0m, according to this article here.

Nope, but it is the second programme in the past week to achieve a share of 13% after Finding Nemo last Sunday.

i think if Boxing to become mainstream, there's needs to be a balance between PPV and terrestrial because a terrestrial audience will keep interest in the sport which will in turn help the PPV sector.