Of coure they have been. But the awards aren't won on the fact that Tonight's The Night got 4m when The Marriage Ref only got 2m. And you don't lose awards for shows that nobody watches.

It's all about the big hits. And ITV's returning entertainment and new drama successes are what won them the award. Everyone in the TV industry will be well aware that summer is effectively "off season" for ITV.

That may be true, but this summer has been the worst to date has it not? It's been notable, not just par for the course.

It will drag their share down for the year unless the returning entertainment and drama successes can outperform their ratings last year in quarter 4 to offset that. (a big ask but not impossible)

I do agree with your broader point about the relevance of the award though.

Ocean Giants appears to have dropped viewers all of a sudden - I guess Page Eight lured some of them in. Countryfile did very well and Britain's Hidden Heritage gave a good lead in to the evening for BBC One.

Match of the Day 2 picked up an excellent figure, but that's no surprise considering the matches.

Dragon's Den seems a bit low on BBC Two (relatively speaking), which is unfortunate. It'd be doing so much better in the 9pm slot though Page Eight recorded a very good figure at 9pm.

Documentary-documentary-filler does not work on Tuesday's for ITV1...why did they think Sunday's would be any different? Maybe they should stick The Xtra Factor repeat at 7pm? It can't do much worse considering it's ITV2 figure! I hope Penn & Teller gets another chance. It deserves it considering what it's been around this time round.

Rush Hour performed reasonably well for Channel 4. Holiday Hijack did ok considering the opposition.

Celebrity Big Brother was obviously hurt by Match of the Day 2 but that's still an ok figure for it. They'll be pleased with the lunctime repeat figure too. The Da Vinci code performed very well.

Someone asked ITV's Director of programmes Peter Fincham what he thought about ITV having its worst ever summer, you can listen to his response here at 37mins onwards: http://live.mgeitf.co.uk/audio/7

He basically says that although he has a competitive streak, advertisers demands made it "commercially improbable" for ITV1 to show their big shows equivalent to New Tricks (i.e. Doc Martin for example) during the summer and that they had to pack in those big shows during the Autumn/Winter/Spring seasons when ad demand is higher, which means ITV is much more seasonal than other channels like BBC1 and will have lower troughs during the summer. He claims that means that ITV took "risks" this summer by having loads of new programmes instead of "playing it safe". He says though that the first 5-6 months until the middle of June was the "most successful first 6 months of the year ITV's had in 10/20 years" in terms of year-on-year ratings rise.

One thing I'd disagree about though is that it's not just the new shows which have flopped, but returning shows like Homes From Hell and Single Handed flopped, as well as repeats of Joanna Lumley's Nile and Unforgiven which is hardly what I'd call 'risky' programming.

Good to see Celebrity Big Brother back up in the 2 million+

A "high risk" strategy for ITV1 this summer, eh? Not only does that not make sense for a time of year whereby viewing is lower and you're better off sticking with old favourites, but it also doesn't really tally with what we've seen. The only real risk they've taken IMO was gifting Show Me The Funny what is traditionally their best 9pm slot of the week. It didn't work.

true enough, maybe a differnt attitude is needed towards the BBC however. As I said it would be much easer if we had a half decent way to guesstimate how much a show improves in the +7 ratings.

Channel 5 really is doing exactly what Desmond hoped it would do around Big Brother, I think the old guy deserves tbese ratings, and his profits.

ITV on the other hand, well do I need to say anything, everyone has pretty much said it for me.

That won't go down well here you know, another regular not toeing the party line of him being the root of all evil for dabbling in the adult TV industry and owning a tabloid newspaper which is entirely un-unique in printing rubbish!

ITV didn't win Channel of the Year based on one set of ratings, but won because, in a broader sense, it has been able to rejuvenate itself and provide themselves with some returning drama/ factual hits in the form of Downtown Abbey/Scott and Bailey/Vera/Whitcher which were needed.

Finchman is right when he says that putting the high rating shows in the summer is commercially ridiculous as there is little ad revenue to gain from it, and so the channel has to be more seasonal than BBC 1. Lets face it, ITV have managed to pick themselves up in the last couple of years and provide themselves with successful Autumn/Winter/Spring periods. A poor summer this year may seem dreadful, but in the grand scheme of things it won't be too much of an issue for ITV when they know that they have some hugely successful commissions in the coming months, and they now have a better idea of how to handle the tough summer slots based on this years disaster.

I'd recommend everyone on this thread listen to the Media Guardian audio bites, they are very interesting!

Agreed. And kudos to Kate Garraway, who did a fantastic job of handling some of the sessions. I was really impressed with her intelligent questioning.

Yeah, the BBC have been very successful in the summer with that strategy. Summer to BBC1 is basically equivalent to Autumn to ITV1, they air some of their highest rated shows during those months:

The Apprentice: highest rated midweek light entertainment show
New Tricks: highest rated drama series
Who Do You Think You Are: highest rated factual series
In It To Win It: highest rated Lottery series
DIY SOS: highest rated lifestyle series
Wimbledon: one of their highest rated annual sports coverages

As someone said a few weeks ago, I think some of these shows actually benefit from airing in the summer rather than autumn because they're up against weaker competition from ITV1. New Tricks and The Apprentice being two examples which benefitted from the summer run this year. This strategy works really well for BBC1 because they can air their established big hitters during the summer - a really difficult time of the year traditionally- which gives the channel the opportunity to launch more new shows during other times of the year when viewing levels are higher, giving those new shows a better chance of succeeding.

I can see why ITV1, however, wouldn't want to air those 'old favourites' during the summer due to the differences in ad revenue. Take Doc Martin for example - during the Autumn it can get about 8m viewers at an ad spot price of about £6 per 1000 viewers (rough estimate), whereas in Summer it would get about 7m at an ad price of perhaps about £4 per 1000 viewers as demand is lower. It makes sense from a commercial point having those big shows packed in at certain times of the year. However, they have been a too extreme this summer and left no good-rated established 9pm series for the summer. I think for the future summers, they need to get the balance better. Even if it means them losing out on revenue in the end due to a certain show airing in the summer than Autumn, I reckon it's worth doing. Obviously I'm not talking about the big big hitters like TXF/BGT which will always form parts of the Autumn/Spring schedules but perhaps look at having a few more established drama series in the summer from next year, such as a few new episodes of Midsomer Murders.

true the guy has a past, no one can deny that, and maybe im judging him too much on his success at Channel 5 alone.

however what I like is that he has bought Channel 5, he owns it, if he fails he could loose everything, unlike certain CEOs at ITV, who can walk away with no real loss to themselves.

Desmond has come in, turned the company around, almost unbelievably tripled profits, in just over a year.

They did take a lot of risks, to be fair, but airing unproven programming across the summer months instead of sticking with repeats of old favourites. Obviously they were hoping that if they chucked enough mud at the wall something would stick; unfortunately it was returning programming that performed the best, and those ratings were nothing to shout about.

Next summer they may as well abandon the new programming approach and at least keep ratings as high as possible - there's no point launching new programming against the Olympics and Euro 2012 will take up the first part of the summer. I assume the soap switch will take place as soon as the football has finished for the summer, but personally I'd wait until after the Olympics and let people settle with the new schedule after then.

FANTASY SCHEDULE ALERT

Monday
7.00 Emmerdale
7.30 Coronation Street
8.00 Tonight
8.30 Coronation Street
9.00 Doc Martin (R)

Tuesday
7.00 Emmerdale
7.30 The Emmerdale Years (in build up to anniversary)
8.00 Midsomer Murders (R)

Wednesday
7.00 Emmerdale
7.30 The Corrie Years
8.00 Lewis (R)

Thursday
7.00 Emmerdale
7.30 The Lakes
8.00 Emmerdale
8.30 Coronation Street
9.00 Benidorm (R)

Friday
7.00 Emmerdale
7.30 Coronation Street
8.00 Love Your Garden
8.30 Coronation Street
9.00 The Paul O'Grady Show (should hold up around 3m)

Saturday
6.15 Creature Comforts
6.30 You've Been Framed
7.00 Harry Potter (x6 - Deathly Hallows part 1 should be available by then?) then 6.30 ITV News; 7.00 Primeval (final series); 8.00 You've Been Framed Extra
9.00 Who Wants To Be A Millionnaire?
10.00 ITV News
10.15 Bourne films/James Bond

Sunday
7.00 Wild at Heart (R)
8.00 Scott and Bailey (R)/Poirot/Marple

Spotted this comment from Danny Cohen on MG: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011...-older-viewers

The Da Vinci Code is one of those films that repeats really well. Channel 5 did great with it and CBB. Rush Hour 3 did okay for Channel 4, Page Eight did fantastic but highlights the problem that while BBC Two do well with one-offs, they struggle with series.

It's common sense; it hurts BBC One clashing the two anyway. They have perfect X Factor opposition with Merlin - why change a winning formula?

They certainly seem to have had a few major flops this summer. Some of it was preventable as well - Unforgiven didn't seem like an obvious choice for a repeat run.

I'm not sure how much worse it has been? Or which slots are showing the biggest losses? Certainly Sunday seems to have struggled - especially once The Royal finished. They used Monday to take a swing with Show Me The Funny and it certainly didn't work out. But I can't even remember what they had last summer in that slot?

High risk would involve spending a lot of money, at which point it starts to have more serious implications if it all goes Pete Tong. They haven't. Instead it's just been highly embarrassing. It's been a cheap not so cheerful summer at the broadcaster, regardless of the amount of new shows there was in the schedule.

Decent effort with your fantasy schedule there. Sure, it's a very uninspiring lineup of shows, but it's probably their best bet against the onslaught which is guaranteed to occur.

Something tells me the three shows looking at how they rate on ITV2 and ITV3 that should have been repeated on ITV1 are:

- Benidorm (highest rated show on ITV2, had 903k on 10/08)
- Doc Martin (last series was in '09, would have helped remind viewers of what happened)
- Taggart (did abysmally earlier this year as it was dumped in flopzone)

Their August 9pm Monday to Friday slot average of 2.6m was by far their lowest rated in recent years (basically ever actually). August weeknight 9pm averages:

2006: 3.7m
2007: 4.2m
2008: 3.4m
2009: 3.3m
2010: 3.7m
2011: 2.6m


They had new drama series Identity in that slot last year. Started with almost 6m but dipped to mid 3s by the end.


They repeated the 2009 series of Doc Martin in primetime last year. I guess they thought one primetime repeat of it was enough. Not sure how a second repeat of it would've rated.

Yeah, and two-and-a-half times as many viewers as P&T when his show was scrapped!

Just going with the week before August Bank Holiday

Soap schedule as now, except an extra Coronation Street on the Sunday.

Monday
8.00 Countrywise: 3.43m (13.9%)
9.00 Real Crime With Mark Austin: 2.52m (10.0%)

Tuesday
8.00 Who Wants To Be A Millionnaire?: 3.24m (14.0%)
9.00 The Bill: 3.34m (14.2%)

Wednesday
7.30 Champions League Live: 4.1m (18.2%)

Thursday
7.30 Nightmare Tenants: 3.37m (15.9%)
9.00 Florida: Paraidse Lost: 3.31m (14.0%)

Friday
9.00 Doc Martin: 3.48m (16.2%)

Saturday
6.10 You've Been Framed: 3.34m (20.6%)
6.40 Odd One In: 3.62 (20.3%)
7.30 The X Factor: 9.67m (42.9%)
8.45 Magic Numbers: 3.14m (14.4%)

Sunday
8.00 Heartbeat: 4.92m (21.5%)
9.00 Martin Clunes: Horsepower: 4.05m (17.7%)

Figures do not include HD

That's true. ITV1 seemed to want the best of both worlds; new programming but not spending any cash in the process. They may as well just air a bunch of repeats and forget about the summer if that's going to be their approach.

Airing catch-ups for popular series is something ITV should be doing far more effectively on its flagship channel, not ITV2 and ITV3.

As I've said before (and will say it again and again no doubt), repeats traditionally performed most strongly on Friday nights - not all year round, but certainly in the late spring, summer and perhaps even early autumn:-

Benidorm, Doc Martin and Downton Abbey could've done with catch-ups.

Remember how well Rebus performed last year? And Rebus was a poor man's Taggart... maybe an audience of 3-3.5m would persuade ITV to show another series.

Drama is the future on Friday nights, a mix of comfy crime drama and popular repeats would really hit the spot, I believe - look at how Five have prospered from a similar policy.

What ITV needs to realise is, it can't appeal to a 16-34 audience every day of the week, and to make ITV more of a television channel and less of a business, it should be offering more of a range.

Post-watershed wise, packing younger-skewed programming on Thursdays and Saturdays would be far more effective in my opinion, leaving Sunday, Monday and Friday for dramas.

Wednesdays is going to be the difficulty, how to reclaim a night which was once their most successful, and is still pretty weak on BBC1 without EastEnders. There probably needs to be a new pre-watershed 8pm weekly drama...but it'll be a big investment so ITV needs to think about it and have a plan, and not commission fluff and have a messy, hasty schedule, as is so often the case.

I think it might be a similar story to Survivor a decade ago - actually it'll rate rather well, but be seen as a flop because people expect more. 8m would ne excellent for it - I'm going to be a bit more cautious and go for the 6-7m range.


The same can be said of so much of what ITV has aired in recent years, but obviously they don't feel like they've got the shows to put into the schedules to perform any better.


By my calculations (based on the 2.06m/8.8% watching Penn and Teller) 23.4m were watching TV in the 9pm hour last night - and picking up comparable figures I've found in January for Sun 2nd/9th 26.0m and 26.6m respectively were watching the 9pm hour then.

So OK, that is a drop of 12% - but ITV1's ratings drop by 75%. There should never really be a situation where 2m viewer in primetime for ITV1 is considered acceptable.