When you say some you probably mean one or two and even then they were probably up against Downton Abbey or something particularly massive.

Channel 5 had a great original series: Murder Prevention. However, they didn't bother to promote it and slung it out in a graveyard slot. So it flopped. What a surprise.

The problem is that the channel now has no drama commissioner and no drama expertise. It was investigating co-production options prior to the Desmond takeover, but that rather put paid to that. In short, C5 has no passion for drama - and that is why the chances of any being commissioned remain slim.

Co-productions are indeed being held up as a way forward to help finance drama - the most expensive of all genres - but hitting the right content to make it appeal to viewers is a tough call. NBC stepped in to save Downton Abbey after it had been developed, so although it's technically a co-production, it wasn't like an overseas broadcaster had any creative input: it was essentially a British programme made possible with US money. Contrast that model with Torchwood, developed as a co-production from the off with a US broadcaster paying more than the BBC, therefore calling the creative shots. And, judging by the UK ratings, viewers are not embracing it as they did Children Of Earth in 2009.

As for the Transporter series, have you seen the scripts? Because I have, and there is a good reason why British broadcasters aren't queuing up to invest in it ...

Strong evening for BBC1 with one of their top 5 Sunday primetime shares this year. Hidden Heritage and Ocean Giants launched really well, and as ever they can rely on Countryfile to get a very strong rating. The Dragons' Den move to 8pm shaved off about 0.5-0.8m compared to the last couple of weeks but 3.3m is still a good rating for the show, especially when you compare it to how it was doing last year. Poor evening for ITV1 - still can't understand why they don't pull a show like Joanna Lumley's Nile, especially as it's a repeat. Born To Shine has been a disaster from the get go and Law & Order UK should've performed a little better given it didn't face a drama this time. Iron Man repeated well for C4 but Streetdance has fared badly over the last two nights - good news for the broadcaster was how well the digital channels did especially the Inbetweeners countdown and CDWM. As expected, low for True Stories but decent for 200 on C5.


Whilst undoubtebly TXF and BGT are massively important to ITV1, you do realise that 8 of ITV1's Top 10 (or you could say 18 of their top 20) programmes are non-Syco TV productions?

ok Corrie & Emmerdale are hang overs from the days of good old regional ITV (or so im told)

the rest im guessing would be Dancing on Ice and Im a Celeb type shows, not something I would be shouting about if I was ITV.

Just like how people hate Big Brother with a passion, people like Charnham hate Simon Cowell & his programmes and have to mention them every 5 minutes, even though in the context of this thread, they are some of the UK's highest rating programmes.

It's funny how this thread focusses almost soley on ratings regardless of quality or any other factors, high ratings = good, low ratings = flop, until a programme that you don't like gets high ratings!

Maybe, perhaps someone with the figures to hand for that one about the modern painters (May last year, IIRC, so probably up against Lewis?), but it does demonstrate that the "core audience", if it exists, is only 2m...

K

edit: this post says it got 2m up against the ratings juggernaut that was "an evening with Michael Buble"!

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showt...s#post40466555

K

but lets face it, most people are going to sit back and say "ITV will improve when X-Factor returns" as if that is somehow good for ITV.

It is not a healthy attitude for anybody to take, and how dare I point that out.

Glad the wonderful Glorious 39 rated respectably.

I do feel this film merited a BBC1 slot with its all star cast, and not a peak summer showing either. Anything from Poliakoff is to be savored, and this beautiful BBC film deserved the largest possible audience.

Just a quick bit of news. BBC Three will be extending their broadcast hours during The Olympics.

I think Poliakoff has a drama coming up on BBC2 later this year.

I guess what you've said is why no broadcaster here has picked it up. However I'm quite surprised the scripts are bad given HBO's involvement with the show.


Aside from those two shows and the Cowell ones, the rest of the top 10 would be non-reality shows. Anyway, I don't really see what the merit of a programme has to do what we're talking about. So what if they're reality shows? They're high raters for the channel. Here's what'd probably be the channel's top 10 programmes in ratings order and the production companies which make them:

1 - 14.1m - The X Factor (Syco TV)
2 - 10.9m - Britain's Got Talent (Syco TV)
3 - 10.4m - I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! (ITV Studios)
4 - 9.7m - Coronation Street (ITV Studios)
5 - 9.7m - Downton Abbey (Carnival/NBC Universal)
6 - 9.2m - Doc Martin (Buffalo Pictures)
7 - 8.5m - Dancing on Ice (ITV Studios)
8 - 8.1m - Wild at Heart (Company Pictures)
9 - 7.7m - Scott & Bailey (Red Productions)
10 - 7.6m - Emmerdale (ITV Studios)

I'd consider Emmerdale more important than some of the other shows in there since it airs daily, and I'd consider lower-rated stuff like Lewis and Midsomer (both of which are non-Syco TV) more important than a couple of those shows as they are vital in terms of repeatable shows on the channel and digital channels, but that's just a list in ratings order.

You can see plenty of shows are non-Syco TV programmes. Undoubtedly, TXF and BGT are very important to the channel which air for many hours in the schedule (especially TXF) and couldn't do without them in this moment in time, but they do have non-Syco TV successes. It's only that their top 2 shows are Syco TV shows, but if you look deeper, they've got shows not made by that company, albeit some of them are on a much smaller, but still successful, scale. I sort of agree about what you said in your subsequent post that it's not really a good thing that some people say 'ITV will improve when X-Factor returns'. Having said that, there are large parts of the year when Syco TV has no shows on air at all such as in the months of January to March, yet ITV1 still does well in those periods, regularly being the top channel in primetime. Summer has been a big problem admittedly, especially this year.

what does that mean for CBBC?

ok so 4 of those shows are reality shows, the Top 3 in fact

1 - 14.1m - The X Factor (Syco TV)
2 - 10.9m - Britain's Got Talent (Syco TV)
3 - 10.4m - I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! (ITV Studios)
7 - 8.5m - Dancing on Ice (ITV Studios)

Im a Celeb and Dancing on Ice are not shows ITV can build on.

Corrie & Emmerdale are of course good for ITV, but again are shows ITV can struggle to build around, other than yet more episodes.

There are few new viewers for ITV in either soap, by that I mean its viewers are already ITV viewers, those soaps do not make non ITV viewers into ITV viewers.

I have also never had a bad word to say about Downton Abbey, its a rare success story for ITV, more of it and ITV will be alot healthy than it is.

I'm not sure actually. I know that the Parliament Channel will be given over to The Olympics next year, which should be fine unless Parliament gets recalled.

In the old days, it was commonplace for both BBC channels to show sport and children's programmes were just dropped.

I guess they could merge CBBC with Cbeebies for those two weeks.

I am not liking the impression that its going to be wall to wall sport for two weeks, I may have to watch ITV if this trend continues.

If these reality shows are bringing in huge numbers for ITV then why shouldn't they shout about it? Those programmes are produced because there is a obvious demand for them- it's business sense really.

True, 4 of them are reality shows. Do you think it's wrong for a channel to have high rated reality shows? I'm not sure I understand what your point is regarding reality shows being popular for the channel. If you look at BBC1 SCD and Apprentice are two shows among their top 5, C4 used to have BB on top of their ratings charts, which will now probably be the case for C5, over in America networks like FOX have Idol as their top show, NBC has The Voice/Apprentice, ABC has DWTS, CBS has Survivor/Amazing Race/Big Brother etc. It's not unusual for there to be reality shows in a top 10 list for channels.


I get what you're trying to say, but considering about 65-80% of the population tune into ITV per week, it'd be quite difficult to label a person as an 'ITV viewer' or a 'non ITV viewer'. For example, if I watched three shows on ITV1 last week, watched nothing the week before, but watched 8 things the week before that - does that make me an 'ITV viewer' or 'non ITV viewer', bearing in mind that one week I watched nothing but another week I watched quite a lot of things. The problem of course too is that if a channel constantly tries to make programmes to bring in viewers that don't usually watch the channel, you alienate the people who usually watch it, as happened in 2005/2006 when they abandoned a lot of drama to lure in younger viewers who didn't watch the channel much, and that's had a long-term effect as loyalty among 'hardcore viewers' of the channel decreased.

I guess its nice to have shows that preform like that year in year out, but im not keen on then, and what happens when that bubbles bursts?

rzt I think there are better ways of attracting new viewers than axing old favourites.

What makes someone an ITV viewer or a non ITV viewer, I guess if you watch ITV regulary a few times most weeks you would be an ITV viewers. Whilst I enjoy TV Burp and have enjoyed Primeval I would not consider myself an ITV viewer.

As for CBS I would hardly say that "Survivor/Amazing Race/Big Brother" is a fair description of whats good about the channel, Big Brother is summer filler at best, whilst the Fall scheulde is loaded with highly succesful and highly addcitive crime dramas.

If you asked someone to sum up CBS in one program it would be CSI, if you asked someone to sum up ITV in one program it would be either Corrie or X-Factor.

Interesting piece on changing viewing habits

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/broadcas...rd-levels.html

Looks like overall TV viewing is starting to stabalise now then with the average UK person watching 4 hours and 3 minutes of TV every day in the first 6 months of 2011. Pretty much level with 2010's 4hrs & 2mins. Viewing on commercial channels has increased proportionally more though.

Better late than never: TTN had 3.97m (20.9%).

The series as a whole averaged 3.83m (21.0%). Last year's series, excluding TXF clash episodes, averaged 4.20m (21.8%). Pretty stable especially share-wise y-o-y, it'll probably be back for another series in 2012.

Very good night for BBC1. Stupid BBC2 scheduling means that Dragon's Den drops a million on last week... they only have themselves to blame with that one I'm afraid. Dismal for ITV1.

It's about time CBBC and Beebies were merged into BBC3 and BBC4. That way the BBC would have more flexibility, and we'd be able to properly measure the popularity of the BBC channels against all the others.

A couple of sports ratings from Saturday:

BBC One
MOTD: 4.32m (27.6%) peak 4.9m (31.06%) at 10.55pm.

ESPN
Newcastle v Arsenal: 0.54m (3.3%) peak 0.83m (5.5%) at 6pm

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/rating...030864.article