"Live" shows score better than plain highlight shows. Still waiting for those.

but 3.2 million came back after the launch, it cleary wasnt the disaster some have claimed it to be.

3.2m is still one of the biggest viewing figures that Channel 5 manage to achieve, I think they will be very happy with that.

Yeah it'll probably end up settling down to around 2 million a night, but Channel 5 knew this was going to happen. They were never going to get *more* viewers than last year.

Friday 19th August Overnights
BBC One
21:00- My Family: 3.7m (17%)
21:30- Miranda: 3.66m (16.9%)

BBC Two
20:30- Gardeners' World: 1.77m (8.1%)
21:00- India on Four Wheels: 2.2m (10.1%)
22:00- The Rob Brydon Show: 1.56m (8.2%)

ITV1
21:00- Someone's Daughter, Someone's Son: 2.43m (11.1%) , +1: 136k

Channel 4
20:00- Come Dine with Me: 1.31m (6.1%) , +1: 148k
21:00- 8 Out of 10 Cats: 1.12m (5.1%) , +1: 281k
21:30- Chris Moyles' Quiz Night: 958k (4.7%) , +1: 276k

Channel 5
20:00- The Gadget Show: 968k (4.5%).
21:00- Celebrity Big Brother: 3.22m (14.8%)
22:00- The Bachelor: 1.33m (7.8%)
23:00- Celebrity Big Brother's Bit On The Side: 676k (6.4%)

Primetime Shares
ITV1: 19.4% (+1: 0.5%)
BBC One's 19.2%
Channel 5: 8.4%
BBC Two: 6.9%
Channel 4: 5% (0.8%)

Source: DS

Ratings generally include HD and are tape-checked where necessary

Pretty much in line with what everyone expected for the 2nd ep and nothing to worry about there. From what I've heard The Bachelor is awful and if it didn't have CBB propping it up it would definitely have started sub 1m. BOTS did OK and probably better than the slot average. the only slightly concerning figure was The Gadget Show. It was experiencing problems in the last series and it doesn't seem to have improved with the day change and preceding CBB. On the whole though a good evening for Ch5 where they are again comfortably 3rd place in primetime.

Ch4's schedule was very dented though.

Pretty good for Big Brother, I imagine Channel 5 may have been hoping a bit higher for The Bachelor, maybe nearer ~2m. Nevertheless good ratings for them and a very solid start to Big Brother.

As expected elsewhere, only other notable mention goes to BBC Two - behind ITV1 in the 9pm hour, but only be 230k.

C5 beats ITV by quite some margin!

Celebrity Big Brother's Bit On The Side isnt preforming too badly, not sure what it does on 5* however. Im sure even half that on 5* would be a bonus to the channel.

Gadget Show did pretty much what I expected, what with it being Friday, still cant help but feel its best days are behind it, but plenty of shows continue long past there best days, im looking at you Mock the Week.

Just had a look back at my Gadget Show prediction, seems I said 1.8 million, pretty sure I meant either 1m or 0.8 million.

Only CBB will save The Bachelor from being another Candy Bar Girls. However, this was clever planning by Five to boost a show that otherwise would have floundered.
3.2 million, still very respectable for CBB and I still predict audience figures in line with the last series on Channel 4. I think the series will be a hit for Channel 5. Also it's kind of watchable as post pub entertainment for both of us.
However, I'll wait until the overnights to mention TXF.

Solid rating for CBB, a drop of 38% from the launch is better than the last few CBB series. I suppose having it as a live show helped retention. The Bachelor didn't start too well though given the lead-in, although I suppose if it can retain 1m+ for C5 throughout the whole series, they may consider it a small success especially as it probably skews with a higher 16-34 audience than most other C5 programmes that get 1m. I'm not really sure what to make of BBBOTS as we don't know what the slot average usually is.

BBC1 wasn't dented really, but again Miranda was very close to beating My Family. India on Four Wheels did well for BBC2, and the higher lead-in seemed to help Rob Brydon which had fallen quite low (sub-1.5m) in recent weeks. Someone's Daughter Someone's Son rated about the same as its first episode, Fraud Squad in that slot next week will probably rate better. BB dented 8OO10C a lot, as it was down 25% from last week. Pretty low for Quiz Night too.

As for tonight, here's the first Friday to Saturday episode drops for recent summer series:

BB9: -24%
BB10: -27%
BB11: -20%

So, if we assume tonight's show drops about ~25% from last night, it ought to be looking at something around 2.4m, although I guess it's possible Xtra Factor competition (which appeals to similar 16-34 audience) and Live WWTBAM (likely 5-6m) might dent it further.

To be honest, Five had said that they would be happy with 2m+ nightly for the show. So having 2.5m+ they would be very happy, IMO (not counting tonight as it is a Saturday), I reckon CBB8 could stay around 2.8-3.0m margin.

I do think as the weeks go on and we get into normal BB ratings will be quite good, as audiences tend to rise slightly in the Autumn.

Saturday from memory always rates badly for Big Brother. Bit On The Side should have stuck with 5* from the beginning, the name is not so appealing either. Hopefully The Bachelor will rise, after all that promotion and lead in it just seems bad.

All ratings in today's and yesterday's report (by me) include HD...I think Andrew has weirdly started not to include them for ITV shows which have an HD audience of under 100,000.

On an entertainment shift today, so soap ratings will be up in the next hour, and a separate ratings article on Channel 4's Inbetweeners night which did very well.

As does the quality of the competition.

Corrie has a

Good ratings again for Channel 5. If they can now position themselves ahead of Channel 4 in the primetime shares more than 50% of the time that would be such a great achievement for them. I think they can do it.

If someone is able, would you mind posting a breakdown for Torchwood on Thursday night and for The Bachelor last night please?

C5 was 2nd in the time slot.

It seems the move to Friday didn't help The Gadget Show at all, it was better than the previous series but I think they need to reduce the episode count to 20 episodes a year.

rzt, do you have a breakdown for Channel 5 from 9pm to 11:30pm on Thursday? I say the specific time so as to include Bit on the Side as I wonder if that was a stable ~1.8m throughout or whether it settled at a lower value. Thanks.

Friday 19th August - Soap Overnights
BBC One
13:45- Doctors: 1.31m (19.1%)
20:00- EastEnders: 7.49m (36.1%)

ITV1
19:00- Emmerdale: 6.03m (32.8%) , +1: 117k
19:30- Coronation Street: 7.53m (37.8%) , +1: 108k
20:30- Coronation Street: 7.37m (33.6%) , +1: 175k

Channel 4
18:30- Hollyoaks: 1.03m (6.1%)

Channel 5
13:45- Neighbours: 659k (9.5%)
17:30- Neighbours: 966k (7.8%)

Ratings include HD and are tape-checked where necessary

Multichannel
BBC Three
22:00- EastEnders: 782k (4.1%)

E4
19:00- Hollyoaks: 525k (3.8%)

Source: DS

I don't know - they always overload Celeb BB with too many and can't see them going back to having 3 or 4 in the final week as the early series had. IMO 12 would be enough assuming 8 evictions and 4 in the final week, but even if they start at 12 they'll send a couple more in I'm sure.

Inside Big Brother is great for historic BB ratings, though they use the officials so you can wipe a couple of hundred thousand off for the overnights I guess. In the officials though last time around CBB stayed above 3.5m in the first week, so I guess that equates to roughly over 3m in the overnights. As I said last night though I think abandoning nominations in the first week means the show has very little structure, which I do think will affect ratings.

One thing BB hasn't been very good with at all in recent years is having a solid structure throughout the week to give people the reason to tune in - only the nominations on Tuesday have been a staple of the show really, and Tuesday nights always rated higher than the rest of the week. Celeb BB should definately have a solid structure with an additional fixed eviction on Tuesdays say, so they could have Noms in the Sun/Wed show and noms revealed in the Mon/Thu show, giving six of the seven shows a real purpose. C4 had the excuse of not having the midweek evictions due to restrictions on having a crowd midweek, but with the C5 series being shorter that shouldn't be an issue.


And in other news, C4 are being stupid with their coverage of the V Festival. They've got three streams online from 12noon today and tomorrow, but only three hours of live coverage on 4Music all weekend and just short of that collectively on C4, plus 90 minute highlights of each day.

If they've got the rights they should exploit them fully - especially now they haven't got BB to worry about. Yes, they might not be able to go interactive on TV anymore but they could at least have continuous coverage on 4Music (as they did the year 4Music launched), and I think using V to counteract Big Brother in the evenings (after 9pm at least) would be wise for C4 and possibly E4 too.

Just caught up on Big Brother-I was interested to see how Channel 5 produced the first highlights show. Very impressed. It's retained its core Ch4 Big Brother values, but has been modernised even more. I liked the music montage of everyone at the beginning coming in. IIRC Ch4 took ages on the first highlights show to get through all the entrances which was very boring. The name tags to familiarise the viewers is a good idea too.

Hollyoaks Later is back on the 5th Sept (at 10pm by the looks of it rather than 9pm) so that's probably coming at just the right time considering the relatively strong summer Hollyoaks has had - though that said the last couple of years we've said Hollyoaks needs to pick up the viewers in the autumn and they simply haven't. Until it's regularly back above 1.5m on C4 (god, it's not that long ago it was regularly at 2.5m) it isn't out of the woods IMO.

How about "CBB beaten in the ratings by My Family. What a humiliation."?


First evidence that CBB might not provide much of a boost to other Channel 5 programmes around it. You don't expect me to believe that The Bachelor couldn't have premiered with 1.3m in an Autumn slot, even without a CBB lead-in, with the tabloids focusing on the bachelor being a top rugby international and Charlotte Church's ex.