Of course in pure financial terms, as you know drama repeats on ITV1 are more costly than new factual, whereas repeating dramas/ comedy on ITV2/3/4 at primetime costs next to nothing. So a 1m audience on ITV2 or ITV3 is worth more in net terms than 3 or 4m on ITV1 to the ITV group

I do agree though that there has to be some balance between the financial aspect and the PR impact of running too cheap a schedule.

But then again, IF the summer had been a scorcher nobody would have been watching tv, but alas it wasnt. So thats another gamble too

Anyways ad revenues are down for everyone this summer with Ch4 suffering the most
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011...utumn-x-factor

ITV1 don't seem to think things through with schedules. The have a success Saturday show pulling in 10 million viewers, it runs for 42 minutes and 18 mins of adverts. Around it they wrap Family Fortunes & Will Young - both supplemental shows are boosted, the latter was always going to struggle though.

24 hours later they run David Jason's Greatest Escapes, around this they wrap Joanna Lumley's Nile & Penn & Teller: Fool Us. All 3 shows flop embarrassingly for a Sunday night. Now the main problem is this all affects the reputation of ITV the more it happens.

Hopefully for ITV1 this will be the last of the weekend flopzones as next sunday the have ROB, CS, ROB results and Appropriate Adult, a much stronger line up and they could win every timeslot.

I don't think many people think ITV1 was crap on Sunday August 28th so I'm not going to watch Doc Martin on Thursday September 8th!

Anyway David Jason's doc was obviously being burned off. If you watched it, it was rambling, muddled and rather pointless. Plus he really looks old these days.

I've no idea what the point of it was but clearly ITV felt the same way when they saw it.

I think ITV genuinely thought it would rate well for them and get at least 3m, if not towards that 4m mark. They probably thought a documentary with a national treasure like him, regardless of whether the actual show was good or not, would pull in a decent audience especially after last year's documentary about the Battle of Britain with David Jason hosting got 4.3m.

I thinks ITVs performance is down to their increasing obsession with soaps, it's marking the channel down as a soap channel.

Although they often have something decent in the 9pm slot it's just not decent enough to tune into the channel especially for that one programme.

ITV1 increasingly don't have an evenings viewing, they have soaps and "significant other".

I bet ITV would love to be able to launch a 3rd soap, that would just about sort out 7pm - 9pm 5 nights a week, leaving them with only 9pm to worry about. 10pm news also needs work but its ratings do depend on its lead in, so a strong 9pm, would help 10pm News.

This Week on the Prediction Game: ITV1 ups the ante with the much-anticipated launch of Red or Black?, brand new The Jonathan Ross Show and two-part drama premiere Appropriate Adult. Returning this week, BBC One's Outnumbered, Channel 4's Million Pound Drop Live and Channel 5's Justin Lee Collins is Living Las Vegas.

Have a pop at predicting >>

ITV need to be actively looking for a good comedy or drama for David Jason to star in, not getting him to do pointless filler documentaries. It's pretty poor that a national treasure like him isn't in a regular comedy or drama anymore (I know he's got The Royal Bodyguard coming up, but that's one 6 x 30 minute sitcom, he could do something for ITV as well).

This was Documentary Of The Week in the Radio Times.

Did it get promoted much or at all by ITV?

Nothing has changed this year apart from ITV1's summer has been truly awful rather than just poor. ITV will say there is no football tournament but thats the case every two years and I remember them holding up a lot better in previous years with no football tournament. C4 and C5 haven't done great over the summer but they arent approaching record lows every week.


I understand ITV's strategy and the need to maximise ad revenue but I cant see how such a torrid summer can be ignored. Its understandable to have stronger and weaker times of the year for a channel such as ITV1 but to go from 10m to 2m in one night or consistently from 7/8m average in autumn to 3m every night in the summer for a quarter of the year needs to be looked at.

You talk about "big hits" what would happen if BBC1 moved their big hits like The Apprentice, New Tricks, Silent Witness, Sherlock and Doctor Who all to October/November slots? Would BBC1 having a great autumn suddenly make it a better channel? No, its the same shows just lumped into a small chunk of the year instead of being spread out over 12 months.

Presumably somebody at ITV commissioned it in the first place?

Or was it a contractual vanity commission as part of Jason's deal with the network for another plodding batch of Frosts?

I think as rzt said, the Battle of Britain doc rated well so this was probably commissioned off the back of that. But there didnt seem to be any particular anniversary or other reason for last nights doc. It reminded me of that John Sergeant Christmas doc last year in terms of aimlessness.

Not defending Penn and Teller, but you're essentially comparing it to Wild at Heart and Dancing on Ice with the 75% drop.

3.5m or 4m would have been at least decent for last night, the fact it only scraped 2m is worrying.

Channel 4 have sent Holiday Hijack to the graveyard, final episode will air next Sunday at 4:25pm.

Running wall to wall repeats all summer would damage the reputation of ITV more than the current strategy.

The tabloids would start running stories adding up repeat hours as a % of total hours like they do every Christmas. At the moment no tabloid is going to run a story complaining about a David Jason documentary, also with no major reality TV flop like in the years Glenn likes to remember, there is no major hook for the tabloids to focus their stories on, as many different genres of programmes have flopped this year.

I remember one Daily Mail article critising the Christmas schedules because they have x% of repeats. They included BBC1's sign zone, CBBC programming, CITV on GMTV, ITV Night Time etc in their calculations which was almost 100% repeats to make the headline seem worse.

Alone Among Grizzlies finished at 8:50pm. That will seriously dent the average.

EDIT: The pre-9pm 5 News update is longer than usual, with a full-length report instead of the usual runthrough of the headlines. And a novelty for the Bank Holiday, C5's 9pm programme started dot on time instead of the usual 3 or 4 minutes past.

Yes, completely aware it's not exactly scientifically sound but the point kind of still stands - ITV are getting 7-8m in that slot from Sept to March, but accepting of half of that or less when actually the total audience isn't that significantly smaller come the summer.

I think essentially though ITV need to find a new generation of Sunday night drama - shows that hold up the ratings in the way Heartbeat and Where the Heart Is did in the 90's, but also tick their demos box more appropriately. And of course too they need really just one more big entertainment format they can build the summer schedules around.

I do think they need to move some of their 'big 3' around slightly, because at the moment you have for this year for instance:

- 21st August to 12th December [2010] (17 weeks - The X Factor)
----> 4 week gap
- 9th January to 27th March [2011] (11 weeks - Dancing on Ice)
----> 3 week gap
- 16th April to 4th June [2011] (7 weeks - Britain's Got Talent)
----> 11 week gap

Extremely long gap in the Summer. There should be a gap of 6 weeks/6 weeks/6 weeks, so it is:

- 21st August to 12th December [2010] (17 weeks - The X Factor)
----> 6 week gap
- 23rd January to 10th April [2011] (11 weeks - Dancing on Ice)
----> 6 week gap
- 21st May to 9th July [2011] (7 weeks - Britain's Got Talent)
----> 6 week gap

Of course it means BGT's average will be lower but it would help out other shows immensely I think.

Also, there's other things, like have Dancing on Ice on Saturday and Sunday's.

If it kicks off will Red or Black be used to boost the summer in some way? Or will that be moved into the winter as well? The only reason why Britain's Got Talent is in the spring is because it's be talent overload running alongside The X Factor. I'm sure if ITV1 could move BGT into the autumn they would do.

I did have to laugh at this bit:

"In fact the rethink could be just what the franchise needs, Cheryl fluttering her eyelashes and Cowell being a **** was becoming tired and predictable."

Also...

"2012 is a bit confusing with the US presidential elections, the London Olympics and Euro 2012 which will all help not hinder the market," he said.

I can't work out why US presidential elections would have any effect on the UK's ad market?

US Open tennis - 19-year-old Heather Watson from Guernsey is giving Maria Sharapova a heck of a game (Sky Sports 2).

I thought the same as well.

if the US had 3rd partys, I would think it was heading towards a coliation of its own, sure Obama is popular at the moment, but the Republicans dont appear to have anyone who crediable to the majorality.

I can see that vote being very close.

I imagine Obama will win a second term, but it will be a reduced majority, a bit like Blair's second term over here 10 years ago.

Back to ratings and I'm expecting another low rating for ITV1 tonight with a Poirot repeat.

Isn't tonight's schedule what people have said ITV should have run all Summer instead of Show me the Funny?

Or is Poirot not on the ever shrinking list of dramas suitable for repeat (which seems to consist of about 4 shows!)

It's yet another bad choice of drama ITV's repeating because their past record shows that Poirot doesn't repeat well on ITV1 primetime. They repeated a few episodes of Poirot in a Sunday slot a couple of years ago which got about 3m, a million down from what Lewis repeats were getting in that same slot a few weeks later. Considering it's going to face a new episode of New Tricks, I would agree it's going to be another low rating for them tonight.