A decent evening for ITV, they must be happy with that for one of the first matches in the season.


Looks like Channel 5 will have easily beaten Channel 4's primetime share again, even more so once +1 is taken off. C5 were probably above all their slot averages from 7:30pm until 11pm last night. Also that is a strong share for CBB compared to the other highlights shows this week.

Just having an hour focused on Seb Coe is surely enough to turn viewers away. Im surprised it got even near 5m!

Another strong night for Ch5. CBB on the up for the 4th day in a row and it seems to be holding the viewers interest. Extraordinary People performed as people expected. Good for Emergency Bikers to be comfortably above 1m and it meant Ch5 was above Ch4 from 8-11pm. Any figures for The Beat Goes On? Ch5 now seems to be beating BBC2 more in the primetime shares too-that's the 3rd or 4th time since last Thursday.

As expected for the football & Emmerdale always suffers before it from finishing early.

Average night for BBC1, but the 7.30-9pm block shows how much the BBC need Waterloo Road. These changes are very risky.

Just checked Channel 4 Sales, Channel 5's all-day share for last week (15th to 21st August) was 5.1%, highest share for it since May 10th to May 16th 2010 when they had a 5.2% weekly share.

How does that compare to Channel 4? Thanks

Channel 4's shares include +1 on C4 Sales so not really a valid comparison I'm afraid.

Here are Channel 5's ratings for last night.

OK! TV 0.3m 1.5%
5 News at 7 0.2m 0.9%
Garden ER 0.6m 3.2%
New Emergency Bikers 1.3m 5.9%
Losing One of My Giant Legs: Extraordinary People 1.8m 7.6%
Celebrity Big Brother 2.5m 13.8%

excellent night for Channel 5.

Merlin & Doctor Who, seems fun however is there enough room in the scheulde, and shouldnt they spread such shows across the year, not have them all at once.

They've just found their audience and they're giving them what they want. Yeah, it's awful telly. But it's awful telly that some people will watch.

You can't blame 5 for playing to their strengths.

If you like BB it is like having sex with a prostitute, you enjoy it, but would never admit it in normal conversation

I think the Normal BB will have decent ratings.

I think ratings of 2-3million for highlights and hopefully 3-4m for evictions.

"I'd like one series of Big Brother, please, but please put it in a plain brown paper bag".


Breaking news: Sir Alex Ferguson has ended his ban on speaking to the BBC. I wonder if that will boost ratings for MOTD2 on Sunday. I know I'm curious to see the first post-match interview and I'm not a great football watcher. I just think Sir Alex interviewed on BBC programmes is going to feel so strange.

Good job Man Utd are playing on Sunday this weekend when Colin Murray is the host. One sarky comment from Gary Lineker and the BBC could find themselves back where they started.

it's not just me. If I'm getting it wrong, I'm in good company.


http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/a.../14/c5393.html


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...rike-Back.html


http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/medi...ry?INTCMP=SRCH


http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011...ow?INTCMP=SRCH

It's being taken in a new direction, that's for sure. Not to my taste, but it's working ratings-wise.

depends whether there are subtitles.

I'm guessing he will say United deserved to win, the referee was biased and should have awarded us [insert number here] penalties, none of my players ever fouled anyone, etc, etc

Worth waiting for!

Extraordinary People has been a successful fixture of the C5 schedules for years. No change in direction has taken place except a bigger variety of programming.

All sourced from a Sky press office press release ! I hadn't realised they were in the business of misleasing. I wonder what Broadcast/Media guardian will think.
I wonder what HBO think of their name being aligned with soft porn operator.

Of course this isn't the first time that Sky have 'mislead'. Their exclusive HBO catalogue deal didn't turn out to be too exclusive.
Ironically the only British Broadcaster HBO is actually working with is the BBC which apparently couldn't happen anymore according to Sky

The Wikileaks film and Parades End are co productions with BBC Drama.
While BBC Worldwide are remaking I Claudius and Criminal Justice for HBO.

I should have included a in my post. Not totally serious, but I stand by my comment that it will feel really weird hearing him being interviewed on the BBC. Always throws me out when I see him speaking to ITV on their CL coverage.

Didn't Sir Alex boycott Sky for a week or two a couple of years ago over some remark that one of their pundits made?

Now that BB has been successfully launched, Channel 5 need to pay attention to their early evening schedule. It's really under performing:

OK! TV 0.3m 1.5%
5 News at 7 0.2m 0.9%
Garden ER 0.6m 3.2%

The recent cricket highlights show that it is possible to achieve ratings of over 1 million at 7pm. C5 could do worse than try and find a daily "stripped reality" format for that slot, for example by licensing an Australian format like "The Block/Renovators" or "My Kitchen Rules". As for 6.30pm, C5 would surely be better off showing a US Sitcom than sticking with OKTV which, despite it's recent rebrand, stubbornly refuses to rise above 300k daily.

Channel 5 is obliged to show 100 hours of news annually in peak time. 5 news at 7 clearly isn't working and should be ditched, in my view. Maybe the quota could be reached by having 5 minute news updates every hour on the hour during the evening?

That seems a strange move ... is that definite or speculation? Doctor Who finishes on 1 October, so wouldn't it make more sense to start Merlin the following Saturday?

Any figures for how Mount Pleasant did last night on Sky1?

Emmerdale's had some low shares in the last month though - August has been the first month for the show this year to have lower shares than last year according to this post.

Some of the soap ratings recently for all three of the big guns have been quite concerning EastEnders down to 32% shares and Corrie closer to 30% than 40%. I'm not sure why this has happened because in theory, during the summer there are fewer casual viewers watching TV, so you'd expect the shares for the soaps to actually be stable or even increase due to the diehard soap fans watching. The ratings will obviously pick up over the next few months as more people watch TV, hopefully the shares pick up too.


506,700 (2.1%)

Press Office Update now up.

Lots of lovely things, including Body Farm whcih will probably be Mondays, the expected 90 minute first episode is now a normal 60 minute one like the rest of the series.

Waterloo Road and Planet Dinosaur starts that week as well. None of them on sunday because of the 2nd week of George Gently.

Well obviously you can't change a channel's entire output overnight. But if signing Big Brother is not a signal of intent that you're changing direction, I don't know what is.

I did pretty well with my estimates yesterday....(shame in the RPG I went for 4.8m)