As Dancc's now posted, it now looks like BBC1 will be airing 3-part factual series 'The Queen's Palaces' on Mondays.


At the moment, it's currently scheduled for 8.15-9.15pm on Saturday 10th September and at 8-9pm on Sunday 11th September.


I doubt Doc Martin will be hitting 10m+ in the officials apart from the odd episode anyway. Out of 30 episodes of DM which have aired so far, it's managed 10m+ twice. Most episodes have officially rated in the 8.5-9.5m bracket.

Channel 4 have got Deal or No Deal until December 2012. They signed a two year deal with Endemol last year on the basis they want the show's budget cut. Which they replied in good response by recording four shows a day rather than three but extending the timeslot to 60 minutes from 45 minutes.

According to my memory, only an handful of Channel 5 game shows had a success on the channel. Night Fever, Fort Boyard, 100% and Brainteaser lasted for years. While many other shows lasted for either 1-2 series such as The Mole, Greed, 19 Keys (the precurser to The Cube), Topranko, Going For Gold etc... 2001 was their top year for game shows, as they had two series of The Mole, the US imported £1 million quiz, Greed, Fort Boyard, 100% and Night Fever. Ten years on, it's been mainly dry.

So we have 1 extra audition show cause the week after is the last 2

Yeah 1 extra auditions show this year. But some of the auditions episodes so far have been shorter than last year's auditions shows (75mins instead of 90mins for the launch, for example), hence why I think they've got one extra episode, because then it balances out to roughly the same runtime as last year.

Some big figures for the soaps last night, inparticular, Emmerdale. 7.1m is its best Monday figure since 18th July when it averaged 7.3m. As I mentioned yesterday, I can see it doing very well next Monday when it airs 7-8pm. I think 7.5m+ is to be expected. Who knows with EE facing RoB? and Corrie facing NT, next Monday, Emmerdale could end up been the most watched soap of the day. Any predictions how Corrie will hold up against NT? Surely NT is set to end its run on its lowest rating of the series, but how will Corrie fair I wonder? Speaking of NT I expected more than 8m last night, but 8m is still an excellent figure. As for ITV1 in the 9pm hour, the less said about that the better. Doc Martin should perform well in a few weeks with the Corrie lead-in and should be matching or bettering NT ratings.

Torchwood US ratings

Were up again on Starz

the 10pm showing was up 16% to 769k

and the 11pm showing was up 58% (!) to 403k

making the total 1.172m

w/e 21 Aug 2011 - BARB Top 10 - no duplicates, includes HD where available.

1 THE X FACTOR (SAT 2001) 12.18m
2 NEW TRICKS (MON 2101) 9.87m
3 CORONATION STREET (MON 1933) 8.93m
4 EASTENDERS (MON 1959) 8.60m
5 EMMERDALE (MON 1901) 7.14m
6 WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? (WED 2100) 7.00m
7 COUNTRYFILE (SUN 2000) 6.23m
8 DIY SOS: THE BIG BUILD (TUE 2100) 5.91m
9 TEN O'CLOCK NEWS (MON 2200) 5.68m + News Channel
10 ALL STAR FAMILY FORTUNES (SAT 1900) 5.61m + HD

Starz will be pleaed, at this rate they will want to renew it.

Spooks will almost certainly be airing on Thursdays from the week after Torchwood ends. I think that's what you predicted a couple of weeks ago too!

it was my feeling, just wasnt sure.

Still its nice the BBC are listening, ill enjoy Spooks even if it is the finale series

Just think with it ending this year, we now no longer have an excuse not to count the awful Code 9.

I don't think the Gold Coast has that much of a winter, but this is a long shot to provide ITV1 with a consistent hit in the dark period between BGT and TXF. .
I often wonder as well if it was such a wise move to ditch Hell's Kitchen. OK the ratings were falling, but it was still averaging 3-4 million a night and could have done the business for two weeks in the summer.

I hope so. After the initial drop its nice to see Torchwood on an upwards trend, at least in the States where ratings will count more this season.

For comparison Doctor Who on BBC America only got 212k more than TW did on Starz this week (on the combined 9pm + 10pm viewing)

Night Fever was a strange one because it was in the middle of Saturday night, forever going up against Noel's House Party and Blind Date, and they never tried at any point to find another show to fill that slot, either between series of Night Fever - they'd either show repeats or a completely different programme - or indeed when it finished. So it was just cast adrift in that slot. What with me being a student, I was all over it when it started, I remember the second series began on the day of Diana's funeral, I was convinced they'd drop it and they didn't.

Greed probably put them off that kind of show, it didn't do very well, but that was their own fault, they'd clearly just decided they wanted a Millionaire-style show so picked up the next available format, but it was far too complicated.

It's tough doing entertainment on Five though because by its very nature it has to go in primetime when the Beeb and ITV are doing the same thing.

Is Channel 4's World Athletics coverage finding its feet yet?

I'm hearing they relieved Ortis Deley of his presenting duties mid tournament, is that correct?

Its being discussed on these threads

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1359888

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1524358

Intriguing to see that Celebrirty Masterchef takes the 14:15 slot on BBC One weekdays from Monday 12 September, quite bizarre scheduling if you ask me (if all is as it seems at this early stage)

Yup, the official proper ratings, the ones that count...


Wow, 4 entries for the nation's Channel of the Year this week. They're on a roll...

How does he rank on the scale of hopelessly bad sports presenters - is he a Lorenzo, a Rosenthal, or just a Chiles?

It could fill the post-Olympic void nicely for ITV1 - or actually probably do relatively well against the games themselves. If ITV wanted too they could rejig their schedules to ensure the big hitters are present throughout the year, but I suspect even if ratings hold up in the summer (and I think they would for something like The X Factor) 12m viewers in Nov/Dec is worth more than 12m viewers in July/Aug.


Not too surprised - 5USA especially should be capitalising on shows being displaced by BB on C5.


1.9m according to Media Guardian. Ever since C4 announced (again) they were axing these shows they seem to keep cropping up. Like so many C4 shows though the 100 Greatest stand was milked too far.


Yes, 48 hours too late to save their reputation I suspect but they finally axed him this morning. Now if they sort the ads out they're nearly there as I can't fault the commentary team or pundits. The highlights show this evening wasn't bad either - Rick now just introducing and closing and Sonja McClaughlin (sic!) narrating most of it.

A Linekar who was relieved of golf presenting!

P.S. Friends finally ends on E4 on Sunday. Scrubs takes the 5pm slot on Monday, with The Big Bang Theory at 6pm and How I Met your Mother at 7.30pm. The 8pm hour looks like this:

Mon: My Name is Earl - double bill from series 1
Tue: David Blaine: What is Magic? (r)
Wed: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (FILM)
Thu (8-10pm): Big Bang Theory (New ep) / Perfect Couples (New series) / HIMYM / Happy Endings (New series)
Fri: Jo Frost: Extreme Parental Guidance

So basically E4 is adding an hour to it's nightly primetime schedule which is a pretty big change in strategy as obviously a less stable audience in the 8pm hour also means the inheritence for their flagship 9pm shows will fluctuate too.

The £15m was a number put out at first - The Daily Mail did a piece on the show over the weekend which said it was £7m which I think sounds too low (indeed, it sounds like they just added up the potential prize money).

If you say £4m for the prize money - divide that over the number of hours and that gives you a starting point of £380,000 an hour. Obviously they might pay out less. And they've got insurance of some description (what level that kicks in, I'm not sure) which will add a bit on.

I can't believe that they'd make the other elements worth £1m because ITVS supposedly want to sell this internationally. And even the US networks would choke on a $2m budget for a reality TV show.

In terms of celebrity involvement, some of it was filmed on the set of Coronation Street with Michelle Keegan and Samia Smith. Cesc Fabregas and Robin Van Persie did something for it. Louis Walsh is seen in the ad firing David Hasselhoff into the air. Jenson Button was also involved. As were Lee Westwood and Rory McIlroy.

Leona Lewis will do the first Saturday guest performance. One Direction will do the last. But I'm not sure how many Syco acts they'll have beyond those two. The producers have been fussy over having X Factor runners-up appearing on X Factor, so on a whole other show...

It would be unlikely to get the same ratings in the summer and your reasoning that 12m in Nov/Dec is worth more is why IAC is no longer on in February. ITV don't care about the summer otherwise they would have done something about it.

I just happened to come across something on Digiguide which I'm not sure if it has been mentioned. ITV are airing X Factor on Sunday 11th at 8pm as well as Saturday 10th. Thats where the extra episodes will be, and there could be up to 9 audition shows. That definitely correlates with how sparse the current shows actually are (ie saving footage).

It looks like they're having 7 audition shows this year, which is one more than previous years. Bootcamp will most likely air over 24th/25th Sep, Judges Houses on 1st/2nd Oct, with the live shows starting on 8th/9th October which is the weekend live shows usually begin.

You're right, I keep forgetting they now air over 5 weeks and not 6. I'm assuming they're still doing the final audition X Factor weekend. Next year they could probably squeeze out another extra episode out by doing 4 weekends and I'm surprised it hasn't been something they've done yet. It could really get the momentum going, although I suspect thats something they're hoping to do from 10th September onwards.