Up All Night is NBC's highest rated comedy for a while, Survivor was down but I expect it'll remain stable against The X Factor next week.

It's be interesting how TAAHM does and Two Broke Girls, I do wonder it's on at 8.30pm, it should be on at 9.30pm.

Worth mentioning that, that's Survivor's lowest ever start to a Fall season. I think it may very well dip against the first episode of The X Factor next week but I expect it to grow and ultimately stablise in the mid-3 range over the long term.

2 Broke Girls is getting to debut at 9:30 out of the Two and a Half Men premiere before moving to 8:30. I think it might have been wiser to keep it in that 9:30 slot for the season but CBS think they (finally) have a show that's strong enough to fill that 8:30 slot which has been a death slot for them lately.

And judging from last year Up All Night might prove to be one of the biggest debuts of the season.

I think Mike and Molly would work at 8.30pm but 2 Broke Girls look compatible with HIMYM, How to be a Gentleman looks awful and will likely be CBS' first casualty of the season.

Interesting news about the NBC comedies. Of course its way to early to judge yet - we clearly need to see them next week in their regular time slots vs the regular competition. That said, it does look like Up All Night at least has a shot at success with strong premiere numbers and a relatively warm critical reception. But the scheduling could leave it isolated. To be honest, I would be fairly happy to put money on it appearing on Thursdays at some point this season (post-The Office if Whitney proves half as awful as the previews?) - that'd be their best hope of protecting and growing it.

Strong night for NBC - Up All Night must be their highest premier for a scripted show in a while , hopefully they've found a hit. AGT did very well, I think Survivor will take a big hit this season, the 'redemption island' twist put a lot of people off last season - could be the same story for BB next year as pandora's box made people question how much of the game isn't scripted

Should we make a US ratings thread, cos this is all kinda off topic .

Does Up All Night have a UK broadcaster yet? Very promising opening numbers.

How To Be A Gentleman may very well prove to be a disaster but I think CBS will stick with it (as they stick with most of their comedies) through to midseason. Although I suppose they might opt to switch it with Rules of Engagement if it does horribly.


As things stand NBC are incredibly invested in that Wednesday comedy block so I suspect they'll stick with it for now. They've got a pretty deep bench of comedies though so Free Agents might not last long if that 2.1 debut is anything to by.


(I think) The Event debuted stronger than or at the very least equal to a 3.7 last year. And that was probably more impressive given that its lead-in was Chuck.

Wonder if there will be a UK bidding war over the new Universal/NBC just announced project - Blue Tilt - in which Ethan Hawke and Vince D'Onofrio (playing what sounds like a similar detective to his famed Law and Order one) are the leads and exec producers.

Does Criminal Intent do well enough to interest the terrestrials or will this go to Sky.

Those crafty buggers at BBC Four. Anyone else noticed they are repeating the final chapter of the original version of The Killing at the same time as the finale of the American version on Channel 4 tonight?

Don't tell me that wasn't pre-planned!

Not as far as I know.


Well it'll have to actually be picked up to series before that happens.

Has a production commitment at least and with the pedigree looks like it might be being fast tracked to keep Vince on NBC.

Having done some rough sums, I think you're right: it's looking questionnable.

Channel 5 are paying reportedly £40m per year for BB - it might be true, it might not be true, but this is the rough amount we have to assume based on what we've heard. Let's take off about £5m for the spin-off shows, meaning that for the main show itself it's probably costing C5 c.£35m for 93 hours this year = ~£380,000 per hour.

Celebrity Big Brother averaged 2.5m in the overnights. About 32%, I'd say on average, of its audience were aged between 16-34, meaning it had about 0.8m 16-34s watching throughout the series.

I don't know for sure how much it costs an advertiser to reach 1000 16-34s on Channel 5. It'd certainly be lower than the £42 figure for ITV1. This page suggests that on C5 the cost per thousand for 16-34 Men is about £50 (on ITV1 it's about £110). So taking that into account, it would suggest that CPT 16-34 adults on C5 (in relation to ITV1's £42) would be just under £20. This correlates with a CPT figure of £28 on C4 as seen here (you'd expect C5 to be less than C4). But let's be generous and say reaching 1000 16-34s on C5 costs about £30 (even though it could well be less than that!).

With an average of 0.8m 16-34s watching CBB, it would generate ad revenue of about £580k per hour (and remember each hour costs about £380k). So a revenue ratio for CBB of 1: 1.5. Pretty good.

Now for normal Big Brother, highlights shows have been averaging 1.4m so far. Let's say that with the launch and higher rated Friday 9pm eviction shows included, it'll average roughly 1.6m (this once again is being quite generous, as ratings for HLs could well fall in subsequent weeks). With about 32% of its audience in the 16-34s, that suggests on average about 0.5m in that age bracket watches. With a CPT of £30 for 16-34s, that suggests ad revenue would be roughly £360k per hour during normal BB, in line if not slightly under how much the show is costing C5 per hour (~£380k if reports are in the right ballpark). So the revenue ratio for normal BB is looking like 1: 0.9/1.0. Not good.

So when you factor in that about 23 hours of CBB is at a revenue ratio of 1: 1.5 and 70 hours of normal BB is at a ratio of 1: 0.9-1.0, overall for the 93 hours they're looking at a ratio of about 1: 1.0-1.1.

So not too good, really. IF the £40m budget figure quoted is correct (this is important- if it was £30m/yr it'd make a noticeable difference in the results), then I don't think they'll be making much, if any, profit from the acquisition overall from C5's POV (perhaps Desmond's other assets such as Daily Star/OK magazine will experience more of a boost). If they are making a profit, it's not really looking like a substantial amount (i.e. a ratio of 1: 2). Remember, however, all of the above is based on ifs and buts (with regard to the budget, CPTs, next few weeks' ratings etc), so don't take it too seriously!

There's a long list of shows that have production commitments and ultimately go nowhere. At this point I think its unlikely that NBC will want to fast track it because they've got enough depth to live without it this season and this is being ordered in the midst of pilot script orders anyway. Of course if their schedule completely collapse over the Fall that view might change.

In general people put far too much emphasis on put pilot and production commitments. More and more production companies insist on these (for shows that have more than one network interested) because it gives them a greater deal of financial security. If the script and/or pilot are bad it'll die just like any other pilot does.

Figures above ignore other revenue streams beyond traditional ad revenue that have been/are being explored.

It wouldn't surprise me if there are just a couple of six-part sitcoms in the first year, with the rest of the year being taken up with You've Been Framed (new or repeats) and maybe Harry Hill compilations etc.

Were there ever DVDs of Big Brother released, assuming these would be highlights as a whole series would come to about 50 DVDs?

Should mean an extra few viewers for the first few minutes of Spooks.

Yikes! I thought that would be really popular, considering how well watched Walking With Dinosaurs was in 1999!

So now that's Planet Dinosaur, In With the Flynns and Life of Riley strangled by that 8.30pm slot. I hope the extra few viewers (or not!) for Waterloo Road are worth it!

shame about Planet Dinosaur, I was hoping it did better than 3.8, damm football

Yeah, it's disappointing, but it'll timeshift well and sell massively overbroad, unlike the others mentioned.

I watched the football, and watched PD on i-player today.

Ah, apologies. I forgot to take sponsorship into account. At BB's peak, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media were sponsoring BB for reportedly £3m per year. With ratings now having dipped compared to 2005-2007, I can't imagine Freederm paying that much for BB's sponsorship. Even if they did, however, that's basically equivalent to £32,000 per hour (in addition to ad revenue). It's not really a substantial amount - it'll make a ratio difference of 1: 1.5 to maybe 1: 1.6 or 1:1.0 to 1: 1.1, if that makes sense. I do appreciate, however, that there have been other sponsorship deals with Domino's etc which would help too.

It's true, there's other revenue streams such as product placement, phone revenues and online, but they pale in comparison to ad revenue and won't give much of a boost. In BB9, there were 3 million phone votes for the entire series. There's been a decline since then, so I suspect this year they're probably looking at a total of 2 million votes for CBB and BB (maximum). If C5 are getting 10p per vote, they're looking at £200,000 from voting revenue for the whole of BB+CBB, equivalent to £2000 per hour. It really is a small amount. Back in the days when BB used to get 6-8 million votes for just the final alone, it made a difference, but not these days. Product placement, at this relatively early stage since implementation, most likely doesn't add much either.

Thanks rzt.

In all honesty, those numbers do not look good.

They need a ratio of much better than 1:1 for what is the flagship show when you factor in all other overheads.

No problem. As I said in my previous post, though, I suppose sponsorship and other revenue streams would bump it up from 1:1 to about 1:1.1/1.2.

The problem is that BB is rating about 0.5m short of where it ought to be at the moment. If it was getting ~1.9m for the HLs at the moment, it would've been a different story. Jeff Ford's comments a few weeks ago, when he said that "history tells us ratings go down slightly" for BB compared to CBB, indicates that they probably would've been expecting around that 2m overnight mark for the current series (compared to 2.5m for CBB). What has happened is a drop of -40% for the current series compared to CBB8 which must be bigger than what they were expecting (and indeed is bigger than trends in previous years).

Sorry missed those BB comments, what does Jeff Ford mean, recent history, I suppose may indicate that, but once upon a time Normal BB massively out-rated CBB, and that was at least right until BB7., CBB was rested at times too, so not really sure where that comment comes from.

Waterloo Road may be suffering from over-exposure on BBC Onr; it seems on more often than not recently. The battle against Coronation Street next week will be interesting (why is there a Wednesday Coronation Street? ) Planet Dinosaur started relatively low but I'm sure will timeshift well. Who Do You Think You Are? seems steady whatever the opposition. I thought Celebrity Masterchef got 1m+ on Tuesday?

BBC Two had a very consistent night with all programming upto Newsnight between 1m and 1.6m. Eggheads is a very strong performer at BBC Two, presumably tapping into the quiz audiences who have watched Pointless and The Chase. Maybe clashing Natural World with Planet Dinosaur wasn't the wisest idea in the world as I'd imagine there'd be something of a crossover audience.

ITV1 had a good evening with Emmerdale holding up despite the earlier finish. The football pulled in a strong figure - I bet ITV1 wish they could have Manchester United every week; especially as there's no Liverpool this year. I'm glad to see The Chase above the 2m mark; does anyone know how Pointless did yesterday, please?

Location, Location, Location and Grand Designs...the next two programmes Channel 4 have lined up to flog to death. They performed very well yesterday. The Best of British really frittered away the excellent lead in. The Simpsons and Hollyoaks between them are doing a good job in the 6pm hour.

A better night for Channel 5. They'll be pleased to see that Big Brother achieved a slight boost, albeit minimal, and that Law and Order: Criminal Intent and New Emergency Bikers both achieved 1m+. Highland Emergency also performed well at 7.30pm, but they need to sort the 6.30-7.30pm hour out - those are very poor figures yet again.